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NBC Nightly News anchor and managing editor Brian Williams has strongly defended his interview with Iranian president Ahmadinejad.
The criticism did not focus on any of the questions Williams asked; instead, the network received complaints that the Iranian president was given airtime on the network at all.
"A staggering number of e-mails are harshly negative, and the writers vehemently argue that we should not have interviewed Ahmadinejad and should not air his comments on NBC," a surprised Williams wrote on his Daily Nightly blog. "Some of the e-mails are rude and hateful. Some vow never to watch NBC again. The question I'd like to ask is: shouldn't Democracy be bigger than that? How do we decide who we can interview...only those who are non-threatening and completely reasonable? Who decides that?"
Williams then pointed to a blog commenter who seemed to have more of a grasp then her fellow emailers about what the first amendment to America's constitution actually means:
"What are people afraid of? That [Ahmadinejad] will somehow persuade us to become radical Muslim extremists? Let THEM be the ones who limit free speech. Let US be the ones who encourage it... even when we don't like it," concluded a poster named "Lucy."
