To fracture the words of Mark Twain, the rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. I took a trip to Colorado last week to help my baby brother celebrate his 50th birthday (and help him remember to take his fiber tabs) and because my column didn’t appear in the paper, and my name wasn’t in its usual place on the newspapers’ website, the local right-wing bloggers said I must have gotten fired.
This, of course, would make some of them very happy because people who don’t agree with them give ’em a case of the heebie-jeebies. They’re sort of like Bolsheviks in that regard; they want their BIG LIES to be the only messages out there.
But sorry, folks; if you’re reading this in the paper, that means I’m still around and you’re wrong — again.
What they were basing their speculations on was that I spoke out recently in a television ad sponsored by Congressman Rush Holt about a national issue I believe is important —improving services for veterans. This, according to their logic, must have caused my employers to conclude that because I said what I believe to be the truth about Holt’s important work in that arena, I was no longer eligible to voice my opinion in print on company news pages.
Since the executives who run these newspapers pay me for my opinion, however, and have done for more than 15 years (even if they don’t agree with it, which I suspect is the case fairly often), I doubt my employers are going to pull my ticket for speaking out as a private citizen.
They also realize my opinion as expressed in Coda is not intended to portray their opinion, but to provide a jumping-off point for public discussion. The fact is, lots of people read this, even if they don’t agree with what I have to say, and that has been proven by feedback and reader surveys over the years. If nobody was reading, you can bet I’d be gone in a heartbeat, and that is as it should be.
But that doesn’t mean my employers couldn’t fire me if something I say makes them uncomfortable, or even if they vehemently disagree with something I opine about in print.
I’ve been reading the coverage over NPR’s firing of commentator Juan Williams, who said on the Fox News Channel that people in traditional Muslim garb make him uncomfortable when he sees them on airplanes. He qualified that later, and said we shouldn’t jump to conclusions, but like the rush to judgment over Shirley Sherrod, that context has been largely ignored.
When I first heard about Williams’ firing, I thought back to a recent incident in which three or four young people in baggy pants, with their hats on backwards and wearing lots of chunky metal jewelry were about to pass me on the sidewalk. There was nobody else around to help me if these kids had nefarious intentions, and I was uncomfortable. I think that was a natural reaction to people I knew nothing about and who were so much different from me.
I was still feeling antsy when one of the youngsters looked over and said, “Hello, Mister Bean,” and I recognized him as the son of an acquaintance. All was well at that point, but I don’t imagine the tightening of my stomach was much different from what Williams was describing he feels when people in traditional Muslim clothing get on the same airplane he’s on. He certainly didn’t suggest those folks shouldn’t be allowed on the airplane, or should be treated differently once they get there, or that they’re up to no good simply because of the way they’re dressed. He just said he’s a little uncomfortable at first, and then his rational mind helps him work around and get over it.
I don’t think admitting that is racist, or ethnocentric, or incendiary, and I don’t think he should have been fired for saying it. On this one point, I agree with the Tea Party opinionators who came to his defense.
They, however, argued that firing him was a violation of his First Amendment rights, and in that they were completely wrong. The Constitution only says that the government can’t censor free speech; it doesn’t prohibit independent organizations like NPR (which gets no direct money from the government to supplement its budget) or Greater Media Newspapers from firing a commentator with whom they disagree.
In other words, the Constitution guarantees our right to say whatever we want in private or in groups, but it does not guarantee our right to have what we say disseminated by a private entity like a newspaper, or a radio or television station. If you want that right in this country, you have to buy your own newspaper, or network, or start your own blog.
I, however, would argue that we ought to listen to Vivian Schiller, chief executive of NPR, who told the New York Times that Williams was fired because the Muslim garb remark was only one of a long pattern of violations of NPR’s code of ethics, including suggesting that Michelle Obama dressed like 1960s black power activist Stokely Carmichael. That he said these things in other venues, like Fox, was unimportant, she said, since NPR’s code of ethics states that journalists “should not express views in other outlets that they would not air in their role as an NPR journalist.”
There’s nothing wrong with opinion, as long as it’s labeled or clearly understood as such, and not dressed up as unbiased fact. But since NPR works at being nonpartisan, I personally think Williams should have been fired by that organization a long time ago and sent packing to enjoy his $2 million-a-year salary at Fox. NPR’s big mistake was not in letting Williams go, but for not doing it when the infractions were much more egregious.
For his part, Williams knew the rules of the game going in, and he shouldn’t complain about how it turned out. In this business, all of us who write objective news or opinion serve at the pleasure of our employers.
Gregory Bean is the former executive editor of Greater Media Newspapers. You can reach him at [email protected].