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Dan Gillmor writes: "I'm disappointed by the latest example of clumsiness by NPR's senior management. This time, the network has decided to jettison distribution of a radio program devoted to opera because the host is involved with an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Had the move been announced on April 1, I'd have celebrated its cleverness as an April Fool's gag. Sadly, it was for real."

Lisa Simeone was fired by NPR for supporting the occupation of Freedom Plaza. (photo: AP)
Lisa Simeone was fired by NPR for supporting the occupation of Freedom Plaza. (photo: AP)



Lisa Simeone and NPR's Executive Cowardice

By Dan Gillmor, Guardian UK

31 October 11

 

Occupy Wall Street: Take the Bull by the Horns

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0SHahAgbQs

 

National Public Radio's ditching of World of Opera over its host's anti-war activism typifies a feeble, misguided 'non-partisanship.'

am a fan of National Public Radio. Its news operation produces the best radio journalism in America, and some of the best journalism, period. I've been listening and donating to NPR stations for many years (not always each year, I must admit), and consider the network a national treasure.

That's why I'm disappointed by the latest example of clumsiness by NPR's senior management. This time, the network has decided to jettison distribution of a radio program devoted to opera because the host is involved with an offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Had the move been announced on April 1, I'd have celebrated its cleverness as an April Fool's gag. Sadly, it was for real.

The host, Lisa Simeone, had already been removed from a documentary program, but NPR felt it necessary to further distance itself from her politics. So, despite the fact that it merely distributes the "World of Opera" program, which is produced by an NPR affiliate in North Carolina, NPR announced that the distribution, too, would be handled by that station. In an email to NPR's media writer, David Folkenflik, Simeone captured the absurdity of the matter: "What is NPR afraid I'll do - insert a seditious comment into a synopsis of Madame Butterfly?"

NPR's move was plainly motivated by the network's fear of controversy - which translates to outright spinelessness when confronted with even a hint that something might displease the right wing. NPR keeps trying to shake hands with American conservatives, but is apparently unaware that the right's right hand is wielding a knife.

The incident highlighted more than NPR's executive cowardice. It also reminded us that American journalists are, by and large, not permitted to express political views in public.

Another freelance journalist, Caitlin Curran, learned that lesson, the hard way, last week. She briefly carried an anti-banker sign in a New York protest; a photo of her made its way to her editors at a local public radio station, and they promptly showed her the door.

The larger issue, of course, is that most US media organisations are convinced that they must demonstrate their adherence to an impossible goal: objectivity. They insist, contrary to logic, that they are unbiased, and they tell their staff members to resist any temptation to express human feelings in any way that might cause a political partisan to get upset.

The issue goes deeper, and is becoming more complex, in a world where all media are becoming social. Telling journalists they can betray no hint of what they believe (about anything important, at any rate) denies them more than what everyone else takes for granted in a relatively free society. It also puts a barrier between them and their audiences - a serious problem given that news and journalism are evolving from a lecture into a conversation.

It bedevils the craft. The Washington Post labored for months earlier this year to come up with a policy for its online journalism. In the end, it issued an collection of guidelines, running thousands of words, that boiled down to this (my phrasing, not the Post's): "We'll do the right thing and figure it out as we go."

If I were making rules for journalists, I'd make them simpler. They would be: 1) Be human. 2) Be honorable. 3) Don't embarrass us.

Today's news organisations obsess over the third of those rules, and disallow the first. They end up with the worst of all worlds: mistrusted anyway by the public, while their journalists chafe at the well-meaning but bizarre instructions to shed their humanity in service of the journalism.

I prefer the style found in the UK, where media organisations - newspapers, in particular - are clear about their world views. So when I have visited London over the years, I've bought the Guardian and the Telegraph - one with a left-of-center worldview and the other coming seeing the world from a more right-of-center stance - and assumed I was triangulating on British establishment reality. Because they were transparent, they earned more of my trust, not less.

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