Friday, October 22, 2010
As Fux and the Great Right Wing Noise Machine
Gin up a hurricane of false outrage at the firing of Juan Williams, NPR has made the reasons behind their action quite clear. Juan Williams was a putz.
His contract was terminated, she said, because “he had several times in the past violated our news code of ethics with things that he had said on other people’s air.”They could easily have fired him because he was a worthless hack just wasting air time, but they kept him on until his multiple ethical failures just became too much. And right after they let him go, Fux gave him a great big heaping helping of Wingnut Welfare. No harm, no foul. Indeed, Juan the Putz was no the only one to benefit from the firing.
On one such occasion last year, Mr. Williams said on Fox that Michelle Obama has “got this ‘Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress’ thing going,” an allusion to a leader of the black power movement of the 1960s.
In each instance, Ms. Schiller said, “We called him on it, we had a discussion, we asked him not to do it again.” NPR’s ethics code states that journalists “should not express views” in other outlets, like TV shows, that “they would not air in their role as an NPR journalist.”
People deserve second chances, Ms. Schiller said, but “we made the decision here because, at a certain point, if someone keeps not following your guidance, you have to make a break. And that’s what we did.”
“And that is the sole reason,” she added. “This is not a First Amendment issue.”
Jennifer Houlihan, a spokeswoman for New York Public Radio, said the issue “was not hurting” pledges. “We’re hitting or surpassing our goal at this point,” she said.
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