Williams' First Lady comments prompt critical e-mails to NPR

NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard examines the roles Juan Williams plays on both her network and Fox News, where he recently said Michelle Obama “has this Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress thing going” (YouTube video). His comments prompted several dozen angry e-mails to NPR. Such criticism of Williams may arise because the “news analyst” (his title at NPR) “tends to speak one way on NPR and another on Fox,” Shepard writes. Managers in NPR’s newsroom spoke with Williams after his comments on the First Lady, Shepard says, and network news veep Ellen Weiss asked the commentator to request that Fox no longer identify him as an “NPR News Political Analyst.”