The Firing of Juan Williams From NPR

[Griff]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

So if you work for NPR you're never off duty, they own your ass.

That is as it should be. On any job if your after hours activities make you ineffective you should be let go. NPR listeners, of which I am one, want reporters we find credible. If you appear on a Fox entertainment program your credibility with me is gone. That goes for all their reporters. They shouldn't be appearing on the talking head Sunday shows regardless of network either. They are either serious journalists or they are not. It is time for NPR to draw a bright line between journalism and pop entertainment. NPR has a chance to turn this in their favor. Make some good minority hires and acknowledge that their liberal world view does skew their reporting in as much as they always look first for a government role when a problem presents itself and they could gain from this.These problems don't make them Fox though. NPR doesn't invent controversy and manage and build it over days and weeks. They actually report what happens.

[glatt]

The NPR vice president, Vivian Schiller, tells employees she regrets how she handles the incident.

Morale at NPR is very low right now. I think they know Schiller seriously fucked up and they are about to lose their funding when the Republican win in two weeks.

In a meeting with employees that had been scheduled before the Williams story broke, Schiller acknowledged that NPR didn't manage the firing well, but offered no specifics. She said NPR would conduct a "post-mortem" next week to review how the firing was handled, according to employees who attended the meeting, which was closed to the news media. Schiller didn't say who would handle the review or what the consequences of it might be.

....

Staffers said that at the Friday meeting, Schiller apologized again for telling an audience in Atlanta on Thursday that Williams should have kept his comments about Muslims between "himself and his psychiatrist."

"There wasn't anger" among NPR employees at the meeting, "but I did get a sense of despair and disappointment," said one NPR journalist, who asked not to be named because employees are not authorized to speak on the record about the matter. "I got the impression that [management] felt they had acted rashly and without deliberation. When [Schiller] made the psychiatrist crack, it just made matters much, much worse."

Schiller is making mistakes this week. Maybe she should take a step back and let someone else take the helm for a bit.

The reason,according to NPR?

Washington-based NPR said the firing was the culmination of a long series of run-ins with Williams in which he was warned to stick to news analysis and not veer into personal opinions or inflammatory commentary. NPR executives have also said they have been concerned that Fox News has used Williams, an avowedly liberal analyst, to paint NPR itself as a liberal news organization rather than a nonpartisan one.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Griff

That is as it should be. On any job if your after hours activities make you ineffective you should be let go. NPR listeners, of which I am one, want reporters we find credible. If you appear on a Fox entertainment program your credibility with me is gone. That goes for all their reporters. They shouldn't be appearing on the talking head Sunday shows regardless of network either. They are either serious journalists or they are not. It is time for NPR to draw a bright line between journalism and pop entertainment. NPR has a chance to turn this in their favor. Make some good minority hires and acknowledge that their liberal world view does skew their reporting in as much as they always look first for a government role when a problem presents itself and they could gain from this.These problems don't make them Fox though. NPR doesn't invent controversy and manage and build it over days and weeks. They actually report what happens.

Do you feel the same about Mara Liasson and Nina Totenberg?

[Griff]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Do you feel the same about Mara Liasson and Nina Totenberg?

Yes.