(Note: The heading above hyperlinks to the show's website.)
I've never actually listened to Juan Williams on NPR, but I'm deeply interested in the story of his dismissal as a news analyst after making inflammatory comments on the Bill O'Reilly show. A whole host of questions come up:
- Freedom of speech: Can't he say what he wants without retribution?
- Professional vs. personal viewpoints: Is he required to abide by NPR's policies only at work, and not off the clock?
- Is NPR biased by not allowing its analysts to comment subjectively and with an opinion?
- NPR receives U.S. Government funding: Because NPR is acting in a partisan way, should funding be cut?
- Was his dismissal rash? A knee jerk reaction to a single incident?
I graduated in 1986 from the University of Wisconsin with a B.A. in Journalism. In addition to technical training on things like grammar we spent a large amount of time studying the role of the media in a range of societies and historical timelines. I'm not a professional journalist, but would consider myself well informed on the role of the media and am very passionate about the need for an unemcumbered and vocal press. Forming an opinion on the NPR/Juan Williams story is a challenge, and today's On Point show helped to inform me.
First, after considering the facts I do believe it is correct that Williams doesn't belong on NPR. The controversy relates to the suddenness and form of his dismissal, which was crude and insensitive. So they are both to blame, but regardless of how he was terminated the conclusion remains that Williams did not have a place within NPR. A media organization (and any organization really) states its goals and mission then develops policies that are derived from them. NPR clearly states that it reports the news in an unbiased, centrist fashion and it requests that its analysts refrain from offering a strong opinion, personal or otherwise, on events. Williams repeatedly went against NPR's policy and NPR discussed his commentary with him over many years. He consciously made the decision to behave that way and a separation was going to come eventually. When the time arrived it surely wasn't a surprise to Williams, but it was to most of America who didn't even know his name. The event got a huge amount of spin from all sides, and became even more intense because of the looming elections.
I believe NPR is labelled unfairly as a "liberal" media organization and I think this comes from the polarized state of politics in the U.S. and the emergence of self-selected media. The polarization creates an "us vs. them", "win or lose", "good vs. evil" lens for interpreting events and situations. This perception is further concentrated and strengthened by a range of media that supports the view held by each audience member, therefore a "dissenting opinion" and even the existence of another opinion, doesn't exist for a great number of Americans. The terms "centrist, impassionate and impartial" don't exist for people who are at polar opposites of each other.
If NPR doesn't reflect one's ideals, then it's subjectively labelled as the polar opposite of those ideals and not as "in between" or "objective." Liberals tend to process information more impassionately and would probably not call a centrist new organization "right wing" whereas conservatives tend to process information more emotionally and NPR would more likely be labelled as "liberal" because its viewpoint is "different." Because the conservative's "liberal" label is the only one being communicated, that's the one which sticks. The opposite is true for conservative news organizations like FOX. Conservatives don't label FOX as "right wing", and it's the liberal news organizations that do that. They're the ones communicating that label, and it's the one that sticks.
In the world of polarized media there is a role for Williams, and he signed up as a FOX analyst shortly after his dismissal. To be accepted by FOX, Williams was certainly identified by its management as representative of their audience's viewpoints, and this fact alone demonstrates that Williams should not have been on NPR. NPR critics should be focusing on the positive aspects of this new alignment, and the shortcomings of the previous misalignment. NPR is simply enacting its policies albeit in a crude way, FOX is taking advantage of a market opportunity, and Williams is profiting by a significant salary increase that he likely engineered in a systematic fashion.
It would appear to me that different factions are using Williams' dismissal to their own end, and spinning the story in their direction. As I see it, the fact is that Williams was in the wrong place, and he's now in a better place so we should all be satisfied with the new alignment between the three affected parties. Williams is free to opine as he likes and in no way has NPR censored itself or sent a message to its analysts.
