Gimme some transparency
Posted by Jeremy on October 22, 2010 · 4 Comments
A simple scenario:
Two reporters are assigned to cover a politician. They attend the same events and are in the room for the same interviews, thus building their stories off the same material. All things being equal, which would you choose: the reporter who (independent of their news stories themselves) keeps their opinions to themself, or a reporter who openly talks about what they think about the issues?
American journalism traditionally has preferred the former with the misguided belief that keeping it to yourself means lack of bias and that unattainable golden mean of objectivity. We saw this one on full display this past week when Juan Williams was fired by NPR for airing what could charitably be called unsavory views about Muslims. We don’t tolerate Reporters With Views very much in the industry; it opens journalists and news organizations to accusations of bias and favoritism.
Except we’re all biased as human beings, and it’s a switch that can’t be turned off. Naturally reporters should try to filter out bias as much as possible in their actual reporting, but if successful the result is fairness rather than a lack of a point of view. The process doesn’t eliminate bias, it only suppresses it.
I take the opposite view of industry. Rather than consume news and try to guess at a reporter’s bias, wouldn’t it be more helpful to have the reporter’s views on the record and stipulated so the audience can bear that in mind when consuming? It’s always seemed like a far more honest way of producing and consuming news.
I’m talking about transparency, of course, which is a nice buzzword in journalism circles that is gaining traction but hardly seems to be having an impact on major media. What NPR did, ironically, was open up its organization to charges of the very bias it wants to be seen as avoiding. It fired Williams for expressing a view that is common in conservative circles. Wait, what?
We had this same debate about the NYC alleged mosque a few months ago, Dave Weigel before that, and Helen Thomas before that, and so forth. When are views so offensive that they shouldn’t be aired? What Williams said was gloriously idiotic, but why bury his views and suppress them when sunshine has always been the best disinfectant? It’s hard to argue that an audience, more informed by Williams’ ignorance, would not be in a better position to judge Williams’ future commentary on NPR because they’ve been informed about the inner workings of his mind. Instead, he’s fired and will be replaced with some other hack who subscribes to The View From Nowhere and gives us little context on the beliefs or thinking that shape their views.
What a shame for us as a news consuming public.
What Williams said was woefully ignorant, but he should not have been fired for it. I argue for transparency of method in journalism all the time, and just because I disagree with Williams doesn’t mean I go back on my assertion that we need more it in our journalism. Williams gave us the gift of more context in order to discern whether his journalism itself is on target, and NPR threw it away in a knee-jerk reaction that leaves us as a public with less context and information by which to judge the quality or make decisions.
Of course Williams has no right to work for NPR. But if I’m NPR I let my listeners decide while offering to educate them as to why I left him on the air. Tell them you disagree strongly with his views (more transparency) but believe that a window into his mind is better for the audience in the long run. After all, the point of this journalism stuff in our democracy is the ability to make decisions; doesn’t more information always help? Don’t we benefit in the long run when we hear Williams talk about race or Islam to know that there are kernels in his mind that just don’t trust someone wearing traditional ethnic clothing?
In short, Williams’ ignorance doesn’t disqualify him from commenting on Islam. But letting the public see his thinking more clearly gives us more standing to disagree with that commentary. That’s the way it’s supposed to work, at least.
Instead, NPR has opened itself to charges of bias by chasing the fanciful unicorn of hope that is objectivity. Williams no doubt is about to become a hero on the right, a poster child for liberal media bias. Usually I take those charges with a grain of salt because it’s more political posture than reality. In this case, though, the charges are right on.
Two reporters are assigned to cover a politician. They attend the same events and are in the room for the same interviews, thus building their stories off the same material. All things being equal, which would you choose: the reporter who (independent of their news stories themselves) keeps their opinions to themself, or the reporter who comes out afterward and says, “Jews control the media!”
Gimme the former. This isn’t a conservative/liberal issue — you’re playing right into the frame the conservative media wants you to take. It’s so disgustingly predictable that I warned my classes on Thursday morning about the kabuki theater they were about to witness in this affair — NPR fires Williams, Fox/conservatives laud him and bash liberal media, navel-gazing media critics pile on NPR for not being “objective”
This is about a media employer being able to fire its employees for making public, bigoted statements. “When I see a guy in a turban on an airplane, I get nervous” is no more (or less) bigoted than “When I see a black teenager, I hold on to my purse tighter,” or anything from the classic Reggie White stereotype catalogue (Indians are sneaky, Jews are good with money, Asians are good with technology, etc.).
It’s one thing to BELIEVE those things. It’s another to go out and say them publicly while affiliated with your primary job. It’s even worse when said employer has multiple times told you to hold back on the crazy when talking in public.
If this had been Juan Williams saying he disliked Obama’s policies on health care, or he though liberals were being silly about gun control, or criticizing incoherent Democractic tax ideas, then he still has a job working for NPR. He wasn’t fired for being conservative. He was fired for being insensitive, and for constantly bucking what his employers asked him to do.
And as for rewards? This “victim” got a $2 million deal after being fired for saying bigoted things about an ethnic or religious group. Somewhere, Helen Thomas and Rick Sanchez wonder where their pile of cash is.
i think there are ways to accomplish your goals without stifling a minority viewpoint, though. NPR didn’t have to just keep employing him. They could have said we’re keeping him, but of the record he’s off his rocker and doesn’t represent the views of most who work here. If he is a public disgrace, he can be publicly shamed without making this an ideological firing. We disagree here, because I think in the end this is almost entirely about the wrongness of what he believes.
Perhaps I’m an idealist, but I see media as the one place where it’s safe to air any view so long as the right to free reply exists. As in, I believe in the right to pillory Williams for being so insensitive. But if we take him off the media landscape and isolate him to Fox News, then all we’ve done is enable the conservative echo chamber and erase the opportunity to engage people after they make remarks about this.
I’m about the process. The rightness or wrongness of one’s views will emerge when this thing works correctly. In Williams’ case, it emerged quite quickly. Shows it’s working, and really eliminates the need in my mind to take the step of firing him. NPR could have shamed him publicly and moved on.
I won’t reply to the right-wing narrative/frame mostly because this was my initial reaction before I saw other commentary on it, and heavens knows I’m not right-winger. Just takes me a long time to put my thoughts together on blog posts …. :p
I think the wrongness of Williams’ comments only emerged after NPR fired him, though. If NPR ignores it and takes no action, then his words are just forgotten, another day of run-of-the-mill Islam-bashing that often gets waved through in public discourse today.
I admit, my initial instinct on this was, “Hey, he really didn’t even say anything all that bad!” But replace turban with yarmulke and you’ve got a problem.
I wish this were a clearer case, but I’m going on record in support of NPR here. As an organization, it had to make a terrible choice — ignore the ignorant & insensitive statements made by one of its own on another network, or take action. They chose “take action,” and I can’t fault them for that.
Perhaps a third course was available, publicly declaring, “Maybe you didn’t hear what Juan Williams said on O’Reilly yesterday, but it’s this, and we disagree, and we’ve told him so, but we’re going to keep employing him anyway.” Then you get pilloried from one side for being a Muslim-coddler and from another for tolerating insensitive language against a religious group. But you’ve kept the handful of media critics happy, ready to move onto another navel, and that’s what it’s all about, right?
Well this is about a lot more than navel-gazing criticism, at least from my corner. I actually teach this as part of the process in training student reporters. Transparency is built into how they learn to do journalism in my classes.