Editor who fired Juan Williams resigns after NPR review

[woo me with science]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/06/AR2011010603649.html


By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 6, 2011; 10:11 PM

NPR's top news editor resigned Thursday after an internal review found that the Washington news organization mishandled the firing of news analyst Juan Williams over controversial remarks he made on a TV program in October.

In an additional piece of fallout from the firing, NPR's board voted to cancel the annual bonus of NPR's chief executive, Vivian Schiller, who supported the decision to fire Williams and made some ill-timed comments about it, for which she later apologized.

Both moves come as a new Republican majority takes over in the House. Partly spurred by the Williams firing, GOP lawmakers have vowed to cut federal funding for public broadcasting. Several NPR staffers said they hoped the latest moves would mollify critics in Congress, but the chief sponsor of the legislation, Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), said, "From my perspective, it doesn't change anything." .... (introduced 2 bills this week to cut NPR funding)

...

Weiss's resignation was met with shock inside NPR. Several people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to comment publicly said that Weiss was given little choice but to resign, given the tone of NPR's board and the pressure from Congress. Weiss was unavailable to comment. Schiller held a series of meetings with NPR's staff Thursday, during which several people expressed dismay at Weiss's resignation, saying it was too severe under the circumstances.

......

(NPR) also said it was "taking appropriate disciplinary action with respect to certain management employees involved in the termination," but it did not spell out the specific punishment.

.....

Commenting on Fox News, where he is now a full-time analyst, Williams said Thursday: "I think it is good news for NPR if they can get someone who I think has been the keeper of a flame of liberal orthodoxy out of NPR. I think she represented a very ingrown, incestuous culture in that institution that's not open to not only different ways of thinking, but angry at the fact that I would even talk or be on Fox. . . . To my mind, this is good news for NPR and for people who care about news in America."

(more at link)

[xchrom]

1. a commentary on our times. nt

[teamster633]

2. In a perfect world,

it would be the tool that hired Williams in the first place getting the ax.

[Orrex]

3. In other news, yesterday morning NPR aired two commercials for YouTube disguised as news stories

Then they ran one for NetFlix. And another for Extranormal. All within the space of about an hour.


NPR is so terrified of Republican pettiness that they go out of their way to hobble their own programming preemptively. Of course, it's easier and cheaper to run a puff-piece about the internet than to do actual journalism, so...

[Canuckistanian]

4. "Pressure from Congress" Astounding.

In a sane world, there could be a serious First Amendment challenge to the firing.

NPR is in serious danger of being a government-run propaganda arm. This sends a chilling effect through the whole organization.

[enough]

5. So glad that the money I used to donate (years ago) to NPR now goes to some

excellent blogs and forums.

[KharmaTrain]

6. NPR's Scared Of State Rushpublicans...

The amount of federal money given to NPR is less that 10% of their operational budget. The money they're worried about is the big chunk that comes from its member stations...many that are owned by state governments (usually through a university). With a large number of southern and western states with the GOTB in the majority in the state legislatures this symbolic bloodletting is a reaction to that new reality more than any sabre rattling on Capitol Hill.

[Orrex]

7. Good assessment

Sad, but good.

[deutsey]

8. Sigh...I haven't listened to NPR in years

Unfortunately, the reasons I left NPR as a listener/supporter (loss of independence, corporate infiltration, bowing to rightwing pressure) seem only to have grown stronger.

And what makes this even more depressing is that the Pacifica Network (the only truly progressive radio network in America) is imploding or at the very least is losing its way (not that it's had a strong news presence since the '60s or '70s).

Why can't the Left get itself together and start building an alternative news network of some sort? Build a one-stop listener-supported/progressive advertiser-supported site that includes text, video, and radio resources. I know there's plenty of stuff out there on the Internets, but everything is so scattered and isolated. I'm thinking of something along the lines of what the Onion does (they do text as well as radio/TV parodies) only make it a Left/progressive resource.

I remember I suggested something like this to the guy who ran (or still runs, I don't know) Buzzflash...Mark Carlin I think. I used to write regularly for him after the election theft. He poo-poo'ed the idea saying things were fine the way they were, basically. Yeah, that's really worked out so well, hasn't it?