After Investigation Into Juan Williams Firing, NPR Executive Resigns

Katie Pavlich | January 06, 2011 3:48 PM

NPR Executive Ellen Weiss, the woman responsible for firing Juan Williams after he made comments on Fox News about being uncomfortable around people dressed in Muslim garb on airplanes, is stepping down from her position after an NPR review of the Williams firing was conducted.

The move also comes just one day after the new Republican Congress gained power. Members of the new House GOP leadership have stated publicly that defunding NPR is at the top of the spending cuts list.

From FoxNews:

Ellen Weiss resigned as senior vice president for news on the same day that NPR's board of directors completed its independent review of the dismissal of Williams. The directors recommended new internal procedures for personnel decisions and disciplinary action.

Williams, who is a Fox News contributor, cheered the announcement.

"It's good news for NPR if they can get someone who is the keeper of the flame of liberal orthodoxy out of NPR," he told Fox News, which gave Williams a bigger role in the wake of his firing.

"She had an executioner's knife for anybody who didn't abide by her way of thinking," he said. "And I think she represented a very ingrown, incestous culture in that institution that's not open to not only different ways of thinking, but angry at the fact that I would even talk or be on Fox."