Juan Williams Fired

[miles]

Any thoughts on his firing? It just kills me inside to be squarely on the side of Fox News but I'm pretty disgusted. I also fear it may the final nail in the Democrats' coffin on election day. Or maybe it's just a big deal on the internet and most voters don't care.

I mean, sure, it was a dumb and offensive comment (he's clearly not alone but he had to have known it wouldn't be smart to say it out loud). But my first thought when I heard from NPR that he was fired because of a conflict in journalistic values, not just for the content of his comment, was how the fuck does Nina Totenberg get away with it? She'll always interject potentially offensive and way biased opinions in her correspondence. Of course I can't think of anything specific off the top of my head, but I did find this gem:

I think [Jesse Helms] ought to be worried about what’s going on in the good Lord’s mind, because if there’s retributive justice, he’ll get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it.

Do you think his firing was due to political correctness or fear, as with Comedy Central censoring that South Park episode?

[greenkoolayd]

NPR has a reputation to uphold......

[theinevitable]

Do you think his firing was due to political correctness or fear, as with Comedy Central censoring that South Park episode?

Are those the only two options?

also, I guess I see the chain of logic, but the idea of something a radio station does affecting whether people vote for Democrats is... so stupid.

[wombat]

Well, this "something a radio station does" is making the news with idiot congresspersons calling for cutting off NPR's funding. Anything can affect the way people vote if politicians make it into a political issue.

[miles]

Are those the only two options?

No. I'm just calling bullshit on their stated reason.

[miles]

also, I guess I see the chain of logic, but the idea of something a radio station does affecting whether people vote for Democrats is... so stupid.

It might be stupid but NPR is kind of seen as the face, or a face, of the Democratic party. Similar to how Fox News is the face of the Republican party, and what it and its employees say and do can have a positive or negative impact for Republicans. Or Rush Limbaugh back in the day. Fox News is much more popular than NPR so it's more likely to have an impact, but it's a similar kind of thing.

[Choop]

it's a tempest in a teapot. news flash: guy says something offensive for the umpteenth time, gets fired; others willing to offend for ratings hire him. when he talked about being nervous around muslims on planes he was appearing as a representative of NPR and they don't want to be associated with that viewpoint. what's the big deal? people get fired for dumb shit all the time. it's only that the right-wing propaganda machine is so desperate to construe anything that happens into something that furthers their "narrative" that they jump up and down pointing fingers without worrying whether their profits inflict harm.

[jay-ell]

NPR is supposed to be party-neutral. That's the whole point of it. Yes, it's viewed as a liberal organization, and perhaps it does have a democratic slant (hmmm, a government-sponsored organization that's in favor of increased funding for social programs? Imagine that!), but ideally it should be relatively bias-free, or at least work to balance its bias by presenting both sides of important issues.

Part of that is hiring journalists whose opinions may differ from the opinions of the management, no matter which side of the political spectrum you hail from. If he had been fired because he'd said something unflattering (but true) about a democrat, I would be incensed right now.

But on the other hand, the dude admitted to being subtly racist. I'd have fired him, too, if I thought keeping him on was going to seem to condone or legitimize racial profiling.

I haven't heard the "official reasoning" behind letting him go, but if they're explicitly saying "he's too conservative to work here," then that is wrong, wrong, wrong. If it's "what he said was offensive to Muslims and we no longer wish to employ him," that's a different issue, at least in my mind.

Also, this: http://muslimswearingthings.tumblr.com/

[greenkoolayd]

Also, this: http://muslimswearingthings.tumblr.com/

i saw that the other day; 'twas quite humorous.  also , i learned what a burquini is.

[wombat]

I haven't heard the "official reasoning" behind letting him go, but if they're explicitly saying "he's too conservative to work here," then that is wrong, wrong, wrong. If it's "what he said was offensive to Muslims and we no longer wish to employ him," that's a different issue, at least in my mind.

The official reasoning is neither, it is that he violated NPR's standards in that whatever his personal opinions are, as a journalist he isn't supposed to be expressing them in public. His job is supposed to be offering objective news reporting/analysis, and he is expected to uphold that standard in public even when not on NPR.

He had been warned about this in the past and it was probably going to come to this eventually. Whether this was a good time/way to let him go for this reason, well, it seems pretty obvious that it wasn't.

[miles]

I mean, if they would have simply said we fired him because the comment was too offensive, well, fine. If you just focus on the portion being quoted everywhere it is very offensive. But he goes on to explain he is indeed only referring to Islamic extremists and that one needs to be careful to not conflate Muslims with terrorists. He was just describing a visceral response he has that I'm sure many Americans can relate to. So really they are just focusing on one quote of a much more thoughtful response, which is unfortunate. William Saletan at Slate offers some of the more thoughtful comments on this:

The damning video clip of Williams, like the damning clip of Sherrod, cuts off the speaker just as he's about to reverse course. According to the full transcript, immediately after saying, "I don't think there's any way to get away from these facts," Williams continues: "But I think there are people who want to somehow remind us all as President Bush did after 9/11, it's not a war against Islam." That continuation has been conveniently snipped from the excerpt.

I couldn't find video of the entire clip (I imagine because it's not as interesting as the one quote) but the above article quotes most of the relevant parts.

But fine, maybe they decided that it crossed a line. But they are not saying that, or just that. It seems to me that they are emphasizing this point, made by NPR CEO Vivian Schiller:

Our reporters, our hosts and our news analysts should not be injecting their own views about a controversial issue as part of their story. They should be reporting the story.

My point is that other analysts/correspondents employed by NPR also say biased and potentially offensive things and get away with it, so I call bullshit.

NPR is supposed to be party-neutral. That's the whole point of it.

It's important to emphasize that point. Vivian Schiller: "No, we don’t have a particular political persuasion."

[wombat]

My point is that other analysts/correspondents employed by NPR also say biased and potentially offensive things and get away with it, so I call bullshit.

I think the difference is that other reporters are almost never saying those things as "I feel..."  It's not a question of just saying things that are potentially offensive, it's saying them as your own thoughts and opinions.

And frankly, any reporter with half a brain doesn't NEED to have his own opinions come out of his own mouth. All you have to do is find a source who will say what you think, and quote them. I have done it many times. It's not necessarily evil - after all, even when you are trying to write a completely unbiased story, what you do is find people who you know are on various "sides" of the issue and quote them saying what you know they will say, because you picked them to express that side.

Anyway, so in a sense, a reporter has to be pretty dumb to risk getting fired for expressing a personal opinion in a story and I think if you listen carefully, that is rarely happening on NPR.

That being said, yeah, I can't explain Nina Totenberg.

[theinevitable]

Juan Williams said something like (I can't find this article now) "there's an attitude that, you know, you should be able to express your feelings, and this is censorship."

the more I think about this the more it pisses me off. J'know what? I think I have some fucked up reactions to black people. I think sometimes I make really unpleasant assumptions about black people, and it really freaks me out, and I think about the fact that I do this a lot. Sometimes I talk to my friends about this, and how upset it makes me that I have these unreasonable thoughts all the time... I really think more people need to talk about this kind of knee-jerk feeling that sometimes emerges.

do you know when I don't talk about this? WHEN I'M AT WORK, REPRESENTING MY COMPANY.

[Nabubrush]

His job is supposed to be offering objective news reporting/analysis, and he is expected to uphold that standard in public even when not on NPR.

Remember when all journalists were supposed to do this? Man, that was cool.