A few listeners and one ALL IN blog responder, asked that I tell you how I personally feel about the Juan Williams firing, particularly in light of my recent tenure on the NPR Board (which ended about a year ago).<\/p>\n
From my first days on the NPR Board, I urged NPR management to give Juan (and other NPR news staff with similar “side gigs”) the following choice: NPR or FOX (or any other media entity that regularly employed them). If we base our reputation on adherence to a rigorous ethics code, if we agree that our relationship with our audiences is based on trust, then we must be scrupulous about how our news people appear in public, as well as on our airwaves. This should not be a big deal–it’s in the ethics code.<\/p>\n
Sadly, this issue was not addressed by any of Vivian Schiller’s predecessors and has now been handled poorly by the current management. But the decision was correct.<\/p>\n
Juan Williams had been warned on multiple occasions in the past that he could not be an NPR senior news analyst and express personal opinions on controversial topics on FOX.<\/p>\n
Now, NPR must make it clear to all of its news staff what the policy is, and give fair warning that infringements of that policy may lead to serious consequences, including dismissal.<\/p>\n
There’s another issue here that has troubled me from my early days on the Board. FOX has always positioned Juan Williams as the voice for the “liberal” perspective, at the same time it identified him as a senior news person with NPR. How can this possibly advance NPR’s efforts to provide the public with a trustworthy source of unbiased information? None of us are perfect, but the goal to be as objective and evenhanded as possible is always our aspiration.<\/p>\n
Having said all this, I must tell you that NCPR plans to examine its own policies on news staff and opinion pieces. Analysis is different than opinion. Our plan is to address this issue thoroughly once we get through fundraiser week and the elections next week. I hope to bring several people from outside our staff to help us look as clearly as possible at the implications of all the news and news-related work we do.<\/p>\n