Mediaite’s Colby Hall: NPR Has United A Divided Country In Support Of Juan Williams

Mediaite managing editor Colby Hall joined New York’s WPIX 11 News reporter Jodi Applegate to give his take on the Juan Williams/NPR firing-turned-media-war yesterday. While the controversy has stirred many emotions, if it can get Whoopi Goldberg and Bill O’Reilly to agree on something, Hall suggests, maybe it isn’t all bad.

“We are in a transition period,” Hall tells Applegate and fellow panelist, civil rights attorney Norman Siegel, “There is no question that the media is changing to be more opinion media.” Siegel offers that the grave mistake on NPR’s part was pulling the trigger too early and hampering free speech on a comment that was, ultimately, a tolerant one: “people have to understand that [this is] what free speech is about… that’s what a free marketplace of ideas is,” and, without it, “in the long run, we all lose.”

Asked about the relative peace between Goldberg and O’Reilly, Hall noted that “the decision by NPR to fire Juan Williams has united a country that was previously divided,” and, as wonderful a service as this is, it’s already starting to seem that the NPR officials “probably regret that they reacted in such a rash, uninformed way.”

The clip from Thursday’s WPIX 11 News below:

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