Executives at NPR affiliate stations across the United States have begun publicly voicing discontent in the aftermath of the network’s dismissal of news analyst Juan Williams, with several station managers openly questioning the actions and judgment of NPR President and CEO Vivian Schiller.

Some station executives said Williams should not have been fired, while others said the firing should have been more professionally handled. Still others questioned whether NPR is fairly administering its own ethics rules, and suggested Williams was fired purely because he appears on Fox News.

The statements by NPR affiliate managers come in the wake of Schiller’s issuance late Sunday of a written apology to them for her handling of the incident, which has generated more flak for NPR than any other event in the network’s forty-year history of operations.

“While we stand firmly behind that decision” to terminate Williams’s contract, Schiller wrote in an e-mail to affiliate managers, “I regret that we did not take the time to prepare the station community and provide you with the tools to cope with the fallout from this episode. I also regret that this happened when the staff and volunteers of many stations were deeply engaged in pledge drives.”

NPR fired Williams late last Wednesday, forty-eight hours after his most recent appearance on “The O’Reilly Factor” with host Bill O’Reilly. The two were discussing the ongoing controversy about plans to build a mosque and cultural center near the September 11 attacks when Williams confided that he gets “nervous” seeing Muslims on the same passenger flights as himself. After NPR fired Williams, Fox News expanded and extended his contract as a contributor to the cable news channel.

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