Scrupuli

blunt essays with sharp points

NPR’s firing of Juan Williams an example of an ethical double standard?

by Scrvpvlvs
Oct 30, 2010 11:12 AM–A friend says yes; the evidence says no.

My blog is syndicated to Facebook. Yesterday’s article on the firing of Juan Williams attracted a comment. One of my friends attached these words:

NPR has a long history of turning a blind eye to leftist opinion from their commentators. In 2002 NPR reporter David Kestenbaum accused the Traditional Values Coalition of sending anthrax powder through the mail to key U.S. Senators and reported the FBI was investigating TVC. In fact none of this was true and Kestenbaum never lost his job for such unprofessional conduct.

But NPR’s liberal bias doesn't end with Kestenbaum either. In 1995 NPR “legal correspondent” Nina Totenberg said that if there is “retributive justice” in the world, the late North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms would get AIDS or his grandchildren would get AIDS. She still has her job at NPR.

In 2005, NPR’s “All Things Considered” aired a segment by humorist Andrei Condrescu, who said that the “evaporation of 4 million [people] who believe” in the Rapture, “would leave the world a better place.” Condrescu was a contract worker for NPR. He has been with “All Things Considered” since 1983. Would he still be with NPR if he had wished for the evaporation of a billion Muslims?

To which I replied:

I had seen some vague comments elsewhere that NPR had applied a double standard in this case. I was curious, so I appreciate you for posting some specifics and goading me into a very interesting investigation. I was unaware of Traditional Values Coalition (TVC, the organization which accused Kestenbaum of unethical reporting).

Do you see the minor irony of making a statement on an issue of journalistic ethics, by posting something without attribution? The text of your comment is an excerpt of a statement that has appeared on several blogs. That statement in turn is a revised, abridged form of a statement released by TVC.

My comments below are directed to the TVC statement.

Did Kestenbaum publicly accuse TVC of sending anthrax powder through the mail, as TVC claim? To me, this is plainly a TVC lie. I have the transcript of the NPR report before me, sourced from TVC’s own website. Kestenbaum reported that two of the anthrax letters had been sent to two Senators who had recently been attacked by TVC. He said he spoke to TVC who told him they were not under investigation. That was it.

Was Kestenbaum’s mention of TVC a breach of ethics? NPR said so at the time. They said it was inappropriate for Kestenbaum to name TVC, because there was no evidence TVC were being or should have been investigated.

But I think this. Kestenbaum’s report was about how investigators try to identify anonymous perpetrators such as the Unabomber or the anthrax terrorist. He reported that one thing you try is to collect and trace critical or threatening writings that were sent to the same targets, seeking to find a lead back to the perpetrator. Kestenbaum illustrated how you would start from something known, like TVC’s attacks on the targeted Senators, and work back through TVC to a possible perpetrator. The TVC attacks on the Senators are what made them relevant to the story. They were the evidence that TVC should have been contacted by FBI—just as FBI contacted Planned Parenthood, also reported by Kestenbaum. Planned Parenthood did not, apparently, denounce Kestenbaum or NPR for reporting this, or claim to have been accused by Kestenbaum or NPR of sending anthrax powder through the mail. Anyway, TVC’s actions say more to me about the ethics and motivations of TVC itself than the ethics and motivations of NPR.

Did NPR apply a different standard to Kestenbaum than to Williams? NPR say they confronted Williams, in a series of episodes over several years, about public statements which did not respect the ethics code, and that this was the last straw. I have seen no evidence for more than the one episode with Kestenbaum. Now if Kestenbaum has a worse history of ethics code violations over the years than Williams, you could make a good case for a double standard.

Having discovered that TVC is a heavily biased and unreliable source, I have not looked into their other claims of a double standard at NPR. But if you find any reliable evidence for it I would be interested.

Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,

(go to complete article)

Share:

0 comments

Juan Williams firing was justified

by Scrvpvlvs
Oct 29, 2010 7:18 AM–Juan Williams put NPR in the position of either firing him or ignoring their own ethics code.

Juan Williams is reportedly a freelance contributor to NPR, but that still means he contracted to comply with the same ethics code that NPR employees must follow.

He agreed to provide credible content, which is defined to mean: fair, unbiased, accurate, complete, and honest.

He also agreed to protect the credibility of NPR content by avoiding even the appearance of conflict of interest or prejudice in his outside activities, public comment, or writing.

The code says that NPR might reject any future content that is tainted by a violation, or simply terminate the contract.

NOTE: I am partly quoting, partly paraphrasing above from the actual ethics code, which I discovered at: http://www.npr.org/about/aboutnpr/ethics/ethics_code.html

Reportedly, he admitted to Bill O’Reilly that he has an irrational fear of Muslims on airplanes. He seems to understand it is prejudicial and to be doing his best to compensate, which is praiseworthy. But it appears to me that his admission put NPR in the position of either taking action or ignoring their own ethics code.

Labels: , , , , , , , ,

(go to complete article)

Share:

0 comments

What we honestly ask Google about one another

by Scrvpvlvs
Oct 26, 2010 7:02 AM–
source: Google Suggest Venn Diagram

Labels: , , , , ,

(go to complete article)

Share:

0 comments

about.me

Follow

feed

E-mail: enter address

Project Euler competitor metaed

vs.

Project Euler competitor db8

profile for MetaEd on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&A sites

Recent Articles

Cataclysm

Open letter re: Grinnell College alumni “lifetime”...

Spybot – Search & Destroy interferes with Lync 201...

A moment of silence

Rondeau

Howard Schultz of Starbucks: firm on support for m...

In each of us, two natures are at war

Clorox does not understand how to measure bleach

This season’s pie recipe

Adamah

Archives

November 1999
June 2000
July 2000
September 2001
October 2001
February 2002
March 2002
June 2003
February 2004
June 2004
July 2004
August 2004
September 2004
February 2005
March 2005
November 2005
July 2007
March 2008
April 2008
May 2008
October 2008
November 2008
December 2008
January 2009
April 2009
September 2009
December 2009
February 2010
March 2010
May 2010
June 2010
September 2010
October 2010
November 2010
December 2010
January 2011
April 2011
June 2011
July 2011
August 2011
September 2011
December 2011
February 2012
April 2012
May 2012
June 2012
July 2012
August 2012
September 2012
November 2012
January 2013
February 2013
April 2013
February 2014
May 2014
October 2014
June 2017
February 2019