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silveradeptThe objective events: Juan Williams is dismissed from NPR for expressing his own anti-Muslim stances and feelings and providing reinforcement and justification for Bill' O'Reilly's similar stances and statements. Fox, in response, has decided to up the ante on the story by resigning Mr. Williams to a multi-year deal with a raise.
Aaaaaand, let the opinion columns commence. Mr. Trzupek believes that Mr. Williams was fired for Speaking Politically Incorrect Truth To Power, while citing several of the standards that NPR used to dismiss him that forbade their analysts from participating in punditry and speculation-based shows, taking positions on controversial issues, and airing opinions on other places that they would not be willing to air as NPR journalists. According to Mr. Trzupek, that's not the actual reason - Mr. Williams saying that Muslims are at war with us and that we have to be afraid of them and anyone who dresses in Muslim-looking attire was the truth NPR didn't want to hear, and so they fired him for saying it. Mr. Trzupek also says that Mr. Williams was a liberal, now cruelly driven away by the forces of ideological purity, liberals should be ashamed of having done so, and anyone who isn't a liberal should take notice of this as the thuggery that liberalism displays to those who aren't in lock-step with them. And worse, we're told, taxpayers fund NPR's far-left, truth-denying agenda, so conservatives should demand that their tax money stop going and not give anything during pledge drives. Mr. Gonzalez also tries to spin the remarks made so that Mr. Williams was really saying that he had these awful feelings, but he said them so that he could exhort everyone to get over them and come together as humans. Mr. Dabul picks up that thread and says, "He was just saying what everyone thinks. He shouldn't be fired or censored for that.". So, we have Truth to Power, Embrassing Self-Revelation, and Expressing Majority Will as the reasons why Mr. Williams shouldn't have been fired.
Putting his pen against all of these justifications, Mr. Greenwald dismisses the argument to Truth (the comments were fairly fact-free) the argument to P.C. censorship (lots of other people were dismissed for other non-P.C. remarks without a conservative outrage), and the argument that Mr. Williams was somehow airing out his fears to dismiss them as irrational (Mr. Williams himself confimed that wasn't it). In addition, Mr. Greenwald makes an excellent point while reporting on this, one that actually does stand up and require thought - if you're going to dismiss people for saying stuff, then apply the standard equally across all places. If broadcasters and radio places and the rest did that consistently and according to their own guidelines, they might find out why it's kind of stupid to dismiss people just for saying stuff, but there's nothing worse than a bad standard applied inconsistenly and with favoritism.
If your analysts and hosts can't pull in the ratings or the sponsors, or if what they're saying is clear fiction when they're supposed to be journalists reporting facts, that's a different story entirely, and is clearly in the realm of grounds for dismissal. For all the other, alternate explanations, it seems pretty clear that Mr. Williams was in violation of the posted standards of conduct for NPR people, and those alternate explanations and reasons rely on the fact that he was dismissed for those stated reasons. I know full well that a lot of people want opinionated blowhards on their airwaves, left and right. That's not intrinsically wrong - in fact, it makes for entertaining media wars, ratings, and donations to political campaigns and parties. We should let them have free discourse, blog, respond to all of those things, send letters to the editor about how stupid, wrongheaded, and factually incorrect they are, and fact-check everything, including stuff from supposedly unbiased and objective sources, from here to the heat death of the universe. It's how this works. Nobody is Unbiased (not even Us), but a good reader can discern what is actually true compared to what is merely spin.
In all of these commentaries, they're dancing around a single point, a very important one, but one that is sitting catty-corner to the axes of censorship that all of the voices are claiming is the central theme. We decry censorship because we value having the input of multiple voices into a discussion and think that arbitrarily shutting off viewpoints and information being available to others because of our own biases is improper. The underlying assumption on that point, though, is that we believe that people have the ability to filter the noise and garbage out and then think about what's left. We assume that the people listening to the stream are intelligent beings capable of thought and reasoning. So when someone shouts "censorship!" at someone else, they're accusing them of the worst kind of hubris - that the people can't do their own filtering, and thus must have it done for them, for their own safety, so that improper ideas don't get into their heads and corrupt them into being poor members of society. Most people would bristle at being called that stupid (and some of them would bristle at a parent calling their kid that stupid), but when it comes to their pet issues, they're all for censorship, because it's just wrong, can't you see?
Inigo is usually unhappy when someone starts throwing around the word censorship, because most of the people who say that NPR is censoring viewpoints that they shouldn't will then turn around and say that private entities totally have the right to fire people who publicly say stuff that's not in line with the corporate philosophy. Private people get to censor, taxpayer-funded entities don't? If that's the case, then a lot of supposedly private entities have a Fairness Doctrine hanging over them, because they get taxpayer-funding through corporate welfare and subsidies. That means we should repeal the Children's Internet Protection Act, which forces any entity that receives subsidized Internet access or technology to censor material from those under 17 (can't you hear the THINK OF THE CHILDRENS people campaigning now against flooding innocent eyes with porn?). Those who lease broadcast spectrum from the government would have to let all viewpoints on, since the government still owns the airwaves. Mr. Greenwald's point stands - if you're going to enforce a bad standard, enforce it evenly and to everyone, so that everyone can see just how bad the standard is and call for its change.
Juan Williams was fired because he violated the terms of his employment contract. Whether those terms are fair is up to debate, and whether it's fair to selectively enforce those terms is definitely up for debate.
Aaaaaand, let the opinion columns commence. Mr. Trzupek believes that Mr. Williams was fired for Speaking Politically Incorrect Truth To Power, while citing several of the standards that NPR used to dismiss him that forbade their analysts from participating in punditry and speculation-based shows, taking positions on controversial issues, and airing opinions on other places that they would not be willing to air as NPR journalists. According to Mr. Trzupek, that's not the actual reason - Mr. Williams saying that Muslims are at war with us and that we have to be afraid of them and anyone who dresses in Muslim-looking attire was the truth NPR didn't want to hear, and so they fired him for saying it. Mr. Trzupek also says that Mr. Williams was a liberal, now cruelly driven away by the forces of ideological purity, liberals should be ashamed of having done so, and anyone who isn't a liberal should take notice of this as the thuggery that liberalism displays to those who aren't in lock-step with them. And worse, we're told, taxpayers fund NPR's far-left, truth-denying agenda, so conservatives should demand that their tax money stop going and not give anything during pledge drives. Mr. Gonzalez also tries to spin the remarks made so that Mr. Williams was really saying that he had these awful feelings, but he said them so that he could exhort everyone to get over them and come together as humans. Mr. Dabul picks up that thread and says, "He was just saying what everyone thinks. He shouldn't be fired or censored for that.". So, we have Truth to Power, Embrassing Self-Revelation, and Expressing Majority Will as the reasons why Mr. Williams shouldn't have been fired.
Putting his pen against all of these justifications, Mr. Greenwald dismisses the argument to Truth (the comments were fairly fact-free) the argument to P.C. censorship (lots of other people were dismissed for other non-P.C. remarks without a conservative outrage), and the argument that Mr. Williams was somehow airing out his fears to dismiss them as irrational (Mr. Williams himself confimed that wasn't it). In addition, Mr. Greenwald makes an excellent point while reporting on this, one that actually does stand up and require thought - if you're going to dismiss people for saying stuff, then apply the standard equally across all places. If broadcasters and radio places and the rest did that consistently and according to their own guidelines, they might find out why it's kind of stupid to dismiss people just for saying stuff, but there's nothing worse than a bad standard applied inconsistenly and with favoritism.
If your analysts and hosts can't pull in the ratings or the sponsors, or if what they're saying is clear fiction when they're supposed to be journalists reporting facts, that's a different story entirely, and is clearly in the realm of grounds for dismissal. For all the other, alternate explanations, it seems pretty clear that Mr. Williams was in violation of the posted standards of conduct for NPR people, and those alternate explanations and reasons rely on the fact that he was dismissed for those stated reasons. I know full well that a lot of people want opinionated blowhards on their airwaves, left and right. That's not intrinsically wrong - in fact, it makes for entertaining media wars, ratings, and donations to political campaigns and parties. We should let them have free discourse, blog, respond to all of those things, send letters to the editor about how stupid, wrongheaded, and factually incorrect they are, and fact-check everything, including stuff from supposedly unbiased and objective sources, from here to the heat death of the universe. It's how this works. Nobody is Unbiased (not even Us), but a good reader can discern what is actually true compared to what is merely spin.
In all of these commentaries, they're dancing around a single point, a very important one, but one that is sitting catty-corner to the axes of censorship that all of the voices are claiming is the central theme. We decry censorship because we value having the input of multiple voices into a discussion and think that arbitrarily shutting off viewpoints and information being available to others because of our own biases is improper. The underlying assumption on that point, though, is that we believe that people have the ability to filter the noise and garbage out and then think about what's left. We assume that the people listening to the stream are intelligent beings capable of thought and reasoning. So when someone shouts "censorship!" at someone else, they're accusing them of the worst kind of hubris - that the people can't do their own filtering, and thus must have it done for them, for their own safety, so that improper ideas don't get into their heads and corrupt them into being poor members of society. Most people would bristle at being called that stupid (and some of them would bristle at a parent calling their kid that stupid), but when it comes to their pet issues, they're all for censorship, because it's just wrong, can't you see?
Inigo is usually unhappy when someone starts throwing around the word censorship, because most of the people who say that NPR is censoring viewpoints that they shouldn't will then turn around and say that private entities totally have the right to fire people who publicly say stuff that's not in line with the corporate philosophy. Private people get to censor, taxpayer-funded entities don't? If that's the case, then a lot of supposedly private entities have a Fairness Doctrine hanging over them, because they get taxpayer-funding through corporate welfare and subsidies. That means we should repeal the Children's Internet Protection Act, which forces any entity that receives subsidized Internet access or technology to censor material from those under 17 (can't you hear the THINK OF THE CHILDRENS people campaigning now against flooding innocent eyes with porn?). Those who lease broadcast spectrum from the government would have to let all viewpoints on, since the government still owns the airwaves. Mr. Greenwald's point stands - if you're going to enforce a bad standard, enforce it evenly and to everyone, so that everyone can see just how bad the standard is and call for its change.
Juan Williams was fired because he violated the terms of his employment contract. Whether those terms are fair is up to debate, and whether it's fair to selectively enforce those terms is definitely up for debate.
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no subject
Date: 2010-10-23 06:32 pm (UTC)