First they said Juan Williams was crazy. Now they are saying he's unethical. It seems to me that NPR is guilty of projection. What is it with these leftists? When anyone disagrees with them they accuse them of being crazy. Then stupid. Then scared. It has become a familiar refrain. Except that it's usually directed at conservatives like the Tea Partiers. This time it's directed at one of their own.
The psychiatrist comment didn't go over well so Schiller walked it back. Here is her latest manifestation.
In the spirit of full disclosure, the source for this article is The New York Times. Ms. Vivian Schiller, CEO of NPR , was the senior vice president and general manager of NYTimes.com. before joining NPR in January 2009.
NPR's Schiller Says Juan Williams Was Fired Because of Ethics Guidelines
The timing might not have been perfect. But firing Juan Williams was the right decision, the NPR chief executive, Vivian Schiller, said in an interview Friday.
NPR found itself under fire on Friday for the decision, including from many conservatives who have resurrected their war against public broadcasting.
Mr. Williams's dual employment at NPR and the Fox News Channel had long been a source of tension at NPR, and it came to a head when he said on Fox on Monday that people identifying themselves "first and foremost as Muslims" made him nervous when he flew. He was fired on Wednesday.
In a telephone interview Friday, Ms. Schiller defended the decision to dismiss Mr. Williams and said it was not the product of political or financial pressures.
When asked why Mr. Williams was fired, she said:
The reason that we terminated his contract is because of our news ethics guidelines.
The guidelines are based on the same news ethics guidelines of the Society of Professional Journalists, and are very similar to that of The New York Times and many other news organizations.
He had several times in the past violated our news code of ethics with things that he had said on other people's air. I'm not aware of any problem with any things he has said on our air. In each of those instances, we called him on it; we had a discussion; we asked him not to do it again. It happened several times. What happened a few days ago was the latest in a series of incidents.
[...]
Asked about that, she reiterated, "This is not a First Amendment issue."
"We are a news organization that exists to serve the First Amendment," she said. "The issue, again, was, Juan Williams, on several occasions — with the thing that happened earlier this week being only the most recent — violated our news code of ethics, to which he is beholden as a news analyst. And it happened again and again. And this time, we decided that enough was enough. That is not a First Amendment issue."
[...]
Some critics of the firing have questioned whether NPR caved in to pressure from the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR for short. The group, which advocates for Muslims, released a statement on Wednesday calling on NPR to address Mr. Williams's comments on Fox, and a few hours later the termination decision was announced.
"I have actually not seen the statement from CAIR," Ms. Schiller said Friday evening. "We don't make decisions like this based on influence. We don't make decisions based either on political pressure or financial pressure. That's not the way we make decisions like this. They're based on own ethics and our own news values at NPR."
Some critics have also tried to connect the dots between the firing and a recent donation to NPR by the Open Society Institute, which was founded and is supported by the liberal billionaire George Soros, a favorite target of conservatives. Ms. Schiller called that idea "nonsense."
Where in the world would anyone get such a preposterous idea?
I wonder if Ms. Schiller has ever heard of Media Matters?
Sent from my iPhone
No comments:
Post a Comment