NPR has fired news analyst Juan Williams for controversial remarks he made about Muslims while a guest on Fox News Channel, reported the BBC.

Williams, who also has worked as a reporter and columnist for the Washington Post and written books about the U.S. civil rights movement, said on The O'Reilly Factor television show that he gets nervous when he sees Muslims on a plane.

"I'm not a bigot," Williams said on the show. "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."

NPR issued a statement saying that Williams' comments were "inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR."

Williams' repeated appearances on the conservative Fox News talk shows long had been a "sore point" with NPR News executives, according to NPR.

In a Washington Post blog, The Plum Line, Adam Serwer writes that he thinks firing Williams wasn't the appropriate way to handle the situation. "I think firing people for things like this tends to chill the public discourse. Misconceptions should be discussed publicly rather than driven underground where they can fester and remain unchallenged. The problem is that on FOX, they are both widely expressed and unchallenged. That isn't promoting honesty, it's enabling Islamophobic hysteria."

Williams' firing follows the forced-exit of White House press corps veteran Helen Thomas and the firing of CNN's Rick Sanchez, both of whom made anti-Semitic comments. Also, Octavia Nasr was fired from CNN for her controversial approval of a Hezbollah leader.