This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, April 5, 2011 - Fox News commentator Juan Williams accused his former employer NPR of using a recent backlash against it as a fundraising pitch to its most ardent listeners.
"They are saying, 'We are under siege. You have got to support us,'" Williams told reporters during a visit to St. Louis on Monday. "It's a way for them to make their fundraising request all the more urgent. I think it's another way to go out and appeal to sponsors and nonprofits."
The remark comes on top of Williams' past statements that NPR's news could be skewed by its reliance on government funding subject to the whims of politicians and on donations from nonprofits with political agendas. On Monday he reiterated his recent call for NPR to lose its federal funding and said the station has other ways to make ends meet besides the government and nonprofits.
"The NPR audience that loves NPR is sufficiently large and affluent that they can support NPR and get NPR out of this bind. ... I just think it's become a burden to good journalism," he said.
Williams has sharply criticized NPR and accused it of liberal bias in the months since the company terminated his analyst position over comments he made about Muslims on a Fox News show. His firing provoked an heated public debate over whether NPR should continue receiving federal funding. Congressional Republicans have since sought to end it, while Democrats have staunchly defended continuing it -- a point that Williams said underscores NPR's liberal bias.
Williams' comments to reporters came just hours before he spoke at an annual policy dinner at Washington University.
In his policy speech, he set aside the NPR matter. Instead he focused on how changing demographics in the country are drastically reshaping politics. In particular, he said the growth in the percentage of people under 18 and over 65 and a huge increase in the immigrant and minority populations had created a larger generational and cultural divide than ever befre.
"This is a different kind of America, and it creates a lot of anxiety when you have so much change impacting the society," he said.
People voice their concerns about the trend in focus groups and polls, he said: "People say, 'This isn't the country I grew up in. The country has changed.'"
Williams said the demographic changes, along with new economic times and a changing world, create anxiety among Americans about whether the country is going in the right direction -- perhaps because it may be deviating from the values they grew up with.
Williams frequently cited figures from the 2010 U.S. census, showing that Hispanics now make up about one-sixth of the U.S. population. He pointed to immigration and a relatively high birth rate among Hispanics as the main cause.
"They may be coming here for an education, maybe coming here for a job ... but not intending to assimilate to adopt our values, to understand our history," creating a cultural clash, he said.
And, he added, many immigrants are bringing children with them or having children once they get here. Then their children have children. Now 25 percent of the U.S. population is under 18, and more than a third of youths are now minorities. Both of those proportions will continue growing, he said.
Meanwhile, people 65 and over are now 15 percent of the population and growing. Williams said they hold different values than the young immigrants, he said.
From talking to some seniors, Williams said, they "don't feel the same connection" to this increasingly diverse younger generation. As a result, he said, seniors don't as passionately support funding education and social programs for those youths with their tax dollars.
Seniors' main concerns, he said: Social Security, prescription drug prices and access to quality health care.
At the same time, the percentage of children born to single women, especially minority women, has skyrocketed, he said. Among Hispanics, that number is 50 percent, and among blacks, it's 70 percent, he said.
Children of single parents are less likely to enjoy educational success. "It's less of a racial gap than it is a two-parent gap," he said. "That's the reality of what it's like to be under 18 today."
The growth in single-mother families is accompanied by a growth in the influence of women -- especially young women. Now women are the majority of students at four-year universities and colleges, he said, and more than ever are going on to graduate school. Four of the last five people considered for the Supreme Court have been women.
"This is an incredible show of the power of women, and it's growing," Williams said. And that's important because women are "the ultimate swing vote in this country. They decide elections."
When Washington U. political science professor Steven Smith introduced Williams, he rattled off a long list of outlets where Williams had worked: the Washington Post, NPR, Fox News. After mentioning that Williams served as a news analyst at NPR, Smith paused and added matter-of-factly: "He no longer works there," sending the room into laughter. "That's my one joke for the night," Smith said.
Not everything Williams said about NPR before his speech was critical. "I think they do good journalism overall," he told reporters. "I think they sometimes are very selective in terms of voices or stories, but in terms of the stories they tell, I think they hold to pretty high standards."
"But the fact that certain voices, especially conservative viewpoints, are absent, that can distort the overall editorial content," he added.
NPR media officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Puneet Kollipara, a freelance writer in St. Louis, is a Washington University student and a former intern at the Beacon.