Update: NPR exec says Juan Williams crossed the line before

NPR CEO Vivian Schiller today defended the firing of NPR News analyst Juan Williams for his remarks about Muslims, saying that he "has stepped over the line" on several occasions in the last couple of years.

Schiller, in an interview with Rodney Ho, Radio & TV Talk columnist for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, calls Williams "an independent contractor" and not an NPR employee. Nonetheless, she says, NPR expects news analysts and reporters alike "to behave like journalists."

Says Schiller:

There have been several instances over the last couple of years where we have felt Juan has stepped over the line. He famously said last year something about Michelle Obama and Stokely Carmichael. [The quote on Fox News last year: Obama "has this Stokely-Carmichael-in-a-designer-dress thing going" and that she'll be an "albatross" for President Obama.]. This isn't a case of one strike and you're out.

William's contract was terminated follow remarks he made about Muslims on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor.

Those comments, in turn came in response to the controversy stirred by O'Reilly in his appearance on The View when he stated that "Muslims killed us on 9/11."

Williams said, "Look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous."

Williams warned O'Reilly against blaming all Muslims for "extremists," saying Christians shouldn't be blamed for Tim McVeigh, NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik writes.

In a statement, NPR said Williams' remarks were "inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR."

In his first public response to the firing, Williams tells Fox News today, The Daily Caller reports, that he got the word by phone from NPR Vice President Ellen Weiss:

"I said, 'you mean I don't even get a chance to come in and we do this eyeball to eyeball, person-to-person, have a conversation? I've been here for more than 10 years,'" Williams said in a Fox News appearance Thursday. "'We don't have a chance to have a conversation about this?' And she said, 'there's nothing you can say that will change my mind. This has been decided above me, and we're terminating your contract.'

His firing has also sparked criticism from conservatives, including several who called for a cutoff of any federal funds that go to NPR.

William Kristol, conservative editor of The Weekly Standard put it this way:

Do the powers-that-be at NPR think Juan Williams is a bigot? Do they think a traveler who has a reaction (fair or unfair) like the one Juan describes, in our age of terror in the name of Islam, is a bigot? Of course the powers-that-be at NPR know he's not. In fact, I suspect the powers-that-be at NPR pretty much think what Juan thinks. But the standards of political correctness must be maintained. Pressure groups speaking for allegedly offended Muslims must be propitiated. And so Juan had to go. NPR -- unfair, unbalanced ... and afraid.

(This item was updated at 1:30 p.m. ET)

(Posted by Doug Stanglin)

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