When a Republican presidential candidate goes around talking about Barack Obama as the "food stamp president," eventually reporters are going to have to write about racism. But how they talk about the issue in instructive. In today's New York Times (1/18/12), Jim Rutenberg has a piece headlined "Risks for GOP in Attacks With Racial Themes," where we learn this about Newt Gingrich's food stamp rhetoric:

Mr. Gingrich was clearly making the case that he is the candidate most able to take the fight to Mr. Obama in the fall, but he was also laying bare risks for his party when it comes to invoking arguments perceived to carry racial themes or other value-laden attack lines.

This is the kind of language one expects to encounter when reporters have to figure out ways to talk about racism without calling it racism. In Monday's Times (1/16/12--Martin Luther King Jr. Day),  John Harwood reported on why several Republicans didn't pursue the presidential nomination:

Political heavyweights who declined to enter the 2012 race all had uniquely personal reasons. Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana faced family resistance; former Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi feared being bogged down in the politics of race; Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey doubted his readiness for the Oval Office.

People who remember the Barbour story might not recall anything about a bog. Barbour talked to the Weekly Standard in late 2010, and he professed fond memories of the white supremacist Citizens Council groups in Mississippi. In Barbour's mind they were anti-Klan activists, which as critics pointed out, is a rather remarkable description of groups that were founded to oppose school integration and protest civil rights advocates.

That controversy brought up other unpleasant Barbour stories, like this anecdote from a 1982 New York Times article (dug up by Ben Smith at Politico) about Barbour's Congressional campaign:

But the racial sensitivity at Barbour headquarters was suggested by an exchange between the candidate and an aide who complained that there would be "coons" at a campaign stop at the state fair. Embarrassed that a reporter heard this, Mr. Barbour warned that if the aide persisted in racist remarks, he would be reincarnated as a watermelon and placed at the mercy of blacks.

That the obvious racism on display is characterized as "racial sensitivity" suggests the Times hasn't changed a whole lot over the years.

One point that Rutenberg's piece today makes is that the pointed questions that were posed to Gingrich at the recent debate were asked by a black reporter: Fox's Juan Williams.  To Williams, there's nothing subtle about what Gingrich is doing here; it is  "more than a dog whistle.... It's a hoot and a holler."

It could be that journalists of color would be more likely to call out a candidate making these kinds of appeals.  That's less likely when there are few journalists of color covering the campaign. To take just one outlet as an example, Richard Prince recently noted in his Journal-isms column (1/4/12) that Time magazine does not have any blacks or Latinos covering the 2012 political season.

David Margolick has an interesting piece about NPR in the new issue of Vanity Fair. He spends much of his time on Juan Williams, but this observation about NPR's right-wing critics is an important observation:

Apart from the occasional stories about gays or Palestinians (and maybe even gay Palestinians), there's precious little on NPR these days for conservatives really to hate. For them, despising NPR and cutting off what amounts to the few pennies it collects from the federal budget has increasingly become more a matter of pandering, or habit, or sophomoric sport, than of conviction or serious policy. The editor of the Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol, once confessed to former NPR ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin that he really didn’t believe NPR was liberal; he just said so "to keep you guys on the defensive." And that still seems true.

As Janine Jackson pointed out here (10/7/11), when you hear about new NPR boss Gary Knell talking about his desire to "depoliticize" the debate, what he means is try to do more to placate people like Kristol. Since that's not going to happen, the only real consequence is to push NPR to the right.

--On Democracy Now! (11/8/10):

While Keith Olbermann's donations became front-page news, little attention has been paid to the massive amount of political spending by MSNBC's parent company General Electric, one of the nation's largest military contractors. Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting reports GE made over $2 million in political contributions in the 2010 election cycle. The top recipient was Republican Senate candidate Rob Portman from Ohio. The company has also spent $32 million on lobbying this year and contributed over $1 million to campaign against a California ballot initiative aimed at eliminating tax loopholes for major corporations.

--George Curry, writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer (11/3/10)  about the state of public broadcasting and NPR's decision to fire Juan Williams:

When NPR fired Williams, conservatives--who have campaigned for years to eliminate the network's federal subsidies--charged that it was violating Williams' First Amendment rights. Williams agreed in a column on Fox's website, saying: "To say the least, this is a chilling assault on free speech."

No it isn't. Juan Williams, a frequent critic of federal entitlements, is not entitled to a job at NPR or anywhere else. And NPR has done nothing to curtail his freedom of speech. Its executives have decided they no longer want his services, as is their right. It's a question of fee speech, not free speech.

I worked for a year as a commentator for a show Ed Gordon hosted on NPR. When my contract was not renewed, I did not assert that NPR had violated my First Amendment rights. There is nothing unconstitutional about not renewing a contract.

More important than NPR's firing Juan Williams for the wrong reason is its failure to fulfill its original mission. The watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting noted that the network "has consistently shown a tilt toward elite guests and sources--government officials, corporate representatives and journalists from commercial media."

FAIR observed, "If the pressure from the right is to be effectively countered, it's not enough to say, 'Don't Defund NPR.' What is needed is a call for public broadcasting to fulfill its mission" with "independent, provocative programming that features voices ignored or marginalized by the commercial media."

By definition, Juan Williams wouldn't fit that description.

A guest post by Frances Cerra Whittelsey, Extra! contributor and journalism scholar:

Whether or not Juan Williams is truly a liberal or just playing the role to give Fox an appearance of balance begs the question of whether his comment about fearing Muslims on airplanes justified his firing by NPR. Williams is waving the free speech flag to defend his "honest statement of feeling," as he put it in a statement published online by Fox. He insists he has not shown himself to be a bigot by admitting that fear grips him when he sees Muslims in Muslim garb getting on an airplane with him.

As I teach in my media ethics class at Hofstra University, telling the truth is the highest value journalists can hold. But that virtue applies to reporting the truth about what we find out as reporters, having the courage to report the reality we perceive regardless of who might be offended or what it might cost us. But our opinions? Journalists are under no ethical obligation to tell their opinions at all, and news organizations like NPR actually require journalists to keep their opinions to themselves. NPR's ethics code states, "In appearing on TV or other media including electronic Web-based forums, NPR journalists should not express views they would not air in their role as an NPR journalist." And that means, says the code, separating "our personal opinions--such as an individual's religious beliefs or political ideology--from the subjects we are covering."

In fact, a journalist's value to the public is in acting as the stand-in for people too busy with their other jobs and obligations to cover the news. It is a privilege that comes with an obligation to always be conscious of our special role, but Williams seems to have forgotten this. There was nothing reportorial about his statement about his fear. He apparently felt the need to voice his own fears in order to show Bill O'Reilly that he shared his gut mistrust of Muslims. Fine. But he cannot then defend his statement as journalistic truth-telling.

In addition, deciding if any behavior is ethical doesn't stop with an expression of one's values, noble or not. To understand an ethical dilemma, journalists need to sort out their loyalties, to ask how they arose and then to rank them in importance. Journalists also have ethical duties and one duty is to avoid conflicts of interest that cause the public to question our fairness. The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics puts it plainly, urging journalists to "remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility."

NPR had already tried to distance itself from Williams before this incident by removing him as a staff employee. Williams accepted this arrangement, and now puts the onus on NPR for continuing to employ him at all. Williams himself might have considered his duty to NPR, as well as his loyalty to a long-term employer--before continuing his enthusiastic employment with Fox. He could have made a choice long ago between the two organizations, but did not. Where was his concern about his own integrity and his duty to the public?

Finally, Williams needs to take a hard look at his comment about his fear of Muslims. If you feel fear every time you see someone getting on a plane in Muslim garb, then you have an irrational prejudice. Your worry about Muslim terrorists has extended to all Muslims in the same way that Americans during World War II distrusted all Japanese. Furthermore, it is irrational to believe that a Muslim terrorist would board an airplane looking Muslim at all.

Williams is prejudiced against Muslims, and just can't see it. It doesn't matter that he went on to say that he's against any statements that would incite violence against Muslims. He's prejudiced and his comment offended Muslims.

And yes, in this country, he does have the right to express that prejudice. But he doesn't have the right to turn around and accuse NPR of restricting his speech. His boss could have handled the firing better, but NPR had every right to fire him for having a conflict of interest and for ignoring his duties and loyalties to NPR and the public.

After being fired by NPR, Juan Williams made an appearance with Fox host Bill O'Reilly (10/21/10) where he explained that he wasn't likely to get support from prominent African-American leaders like Al Sharpton because "I'm not a predictable black liberal."

It's not totally clear what he means by that, but Williams does a pretty good job as a Fox News Liberal-- i.e., someone willing to attack left-liberal groups and leaders while doing very little to promote an actual left-leaning perspective. This point was echoed in a column penned by Newsmax's Ronald Kessler (10/25/10), who wrote that he's known Williams since the 1970s and "the fact is, Williams is no liberal." He adds:

If you doubt that, read his book Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America--and What We Can Do About It. The book attacks Democrats and black leaders like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton for promoting a "culture of failure" among blacks.

In an interview after the book was published, Williams told me that the Democratic Party "has not delivered in terms of protecting the poor, minorities in the country, on basic items, like education for your children, safety in our streets, making sure that you have the opportunity to have an economic foothold on the ladder of upward mobility."

That is why "there’s a need for a strong Republican voice among minorities, that’s why you need competition of ideas,” he said. "The one-party system has failed the poor and minority in this country."

Kessler adds this:

I once asked him why he comes across as a liberal in discussions on Fox News when I know him as leaning more to the conservative side. He said, in effect, that someone has to do it, meaning he is simply being a good commentator.

A reminder of what that pretend-left commentary amounts to came on yesterday's broadcast of Fox's Special Report program (10/25/10), where Williams responded when asked about the recent WikiLeaks disclosures from the Iraq War:

Well, you know what strikes me is that there's no big revelation. I think everybody sitting on this panel, everybody in America who's interested in the story, knew that, in fact, Iran was involved in Iraq. So I don't think that's it.

What this is, is trouble-making for the ability of the Maliki government to form a coalition of government, to try--you know, we're trying to move forward in Iraq at this moment. There is nothing in these documents that would suggest the U.S. military or the U.S. civilian leadership behaved wrongly, improperly. There's no great scandal here.

There's no reason to put out these documents. This is not the Pentagon Papers. This, in fact, is just trouble-making for people who are now trying to make the best of what has been a difficult situation that's been on the uptick. So it seems just mischievous and unnecessary.

I guess it's worth $2 million for Fox News to keep a "liberal" around who will say such things. One can only hope that NPR listeners will  learn to live without this caliber of analysis.

It seems to me that debating Juan Williams' firing from NPR in terms of the role of "opinion" and "objectivity" in journalism is missing the point. Williams has expressed his opinions on Fox News countless times. Other NPR employees frequently express opinions, too, as when Scott Simon wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal (10/11/01) comparing opponents of the invasion of Afghanistan to Hitler appeasers; it didn't seem to set back Simon's career any.

The reason that Williams' discussion with Bill O'Reilly (O'Reilly Factor, 10/18/10) got him fired, it seems clear to me, is that he sounded like he was declaring himself to be a bigot--even as he announced that he wasn't one:

I mean, look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.

Now, I remember also that when the Times Square bomber was at court, I think this was just last week. He said the war with Muslims, America's war is just beginning, first drop of blood. I don't think there's any way to get away from these facts.

Now, it's clear that Williams is describing an irrational prejudice here: Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols together represented a larger percentage of American conservatives than the 19 September 11 hijackers did of worldwide Muslims, so panicking when you see a Muslim get on a plane with you makes a little less sense than worrying that the passenger reading the Wall Street Journal might have a bomb.

Was Williams justifying his prejudice or criticizing it? That's a little harder to say. As you can see in the quote, he immediately links it with a bomber's statement about America's "war with Muslims...just beginning" as "facts" you can't get away from--suggesting that he did not think he was just describing the psychodrama inside his own head. On the other hand, he does go on in his conversation with O'Reilly to suggest that all Muslims shouldn't be held responsible for the actions of extremists: "If you said Timothy McVeigh, the Atlanta bomber, these people who are protesting against homosexuality at military funerals, very obnoxious, you don’t say first and foremost, we got a problem with Christians. That’s crazy."

On the third hand, he did begin his appearance by appearing to endorse O'Reilly's thesis that "there is a Muslim problem in the world": "I think you’re right," Williams began. "I think, look, political correctness can lead to some kind of paralysis where you don’t address reality." When O'Reilly concluded the segment by saying, "to diminish the whole thing as the left wants to do [would be] very dangerous"--apparently meaning the whole Muslim thing--Williams seems to agree: "That would be hypocrisy."

So you have to do some parsing of words to determine what exactly Williams was trying to say. (My best guess: People are right to be afraid of Muslims, but they shouldn't get carried away about it.) But that was also true of Rick Sanchez's comments that got him fired from CNN, and Helen Thomas' remarks that ended her 67-year career. In those cases, though, the speaker's lack of clarity did not keep outlets from drawing conclusions and acting accordingly. Many of the people now condemning NPR for firing Williams took the opposite position when it came to Thomas, but the media principle ought to be the same: Bigotry is not just another opinion.

There are  plenty of opinions flying around about NPR's decision to fire Juan Williams. The Washington Post editorialized against NPR's decision, arguing in part that Williams "undoubtedly spoke for many Americans who are wrestling with similar feelings" about seeing Muslims in airports. (Williams was worried primarily about those in "Muslim garb.") Former Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz, now at the  Daily Beast website, called it a "blunder of enormous proportions."

What I found most puzzling, though, was this passage from Williams' commentary that appeared on FoxNews.com:

Daniel Schorr, my fellow NPR commentator who died earlier this year, used to talk about the initial shock of finding himself on President Nixon’s enemies list. I can only imagine Dan’s revulsion to realize that today NPR treats a journalist who has worked for them for 10 years with less regard, less respect for the value of independence of thought and embrace of real debate across political lines, than Nixon ever displayed.

I don't know what Schorr might have said to Williams, but I suspect he may have pointed out that in the most infamous case, Nixon had CIA agents trailing Jack Anderson, a reporter he despised, and they were plotting ways they might kill him. (Mark Feldstein's recent book explaining the history was excerpted on NPR's website.) That seems worse to me. A lot worse.

Progressive critic Dr. Roberto Rodriguez has a new commentary (New America Media, 6/2/09) demonstrating how the miserable press reaction to Judge Sonia Sotomayor's U.S. Supreme Court "nomination clearly shows us is that what this nation needs is more incisive journalism, not less." But, Rodriguez laments, "to be sure, the rise of right-wing media, which include Fox News and virtually all the known right-wing radio talkshow hosts, is the antithesis of journalism":

Their coverage of the Sotomayor nomination points to the need for honest debate, not simply on the issues of race, but on the right wing's aversion to truth. It also points to the right wing's pompous beliefs, on every topic, including affirmative action, that their positions are "American."

Extremist politicos Newt Gingrich and Tom Tancredo, both of whom have zero credibility but are stars of right-wing media, have led the charge that Sotomayor is a racist. They have been joined by the usual wingnuts: Rush Limbaugh, Gordon Liddy, Glenn Beck, Pat Buchanan, Lou Dobbs, to name a few. Even Juan Williams of NPR, has parroted the claim that Sotomayor's (out-of-context) statements are racist. The fact that the nation’s discussion centers on whether she is a racist or not--or that she is an "affirmative action" pick (Buchanan)--points to both the power of the wingnuts and also to the virtual impotence, or complicity, of mainstream media.

While "these pundits who daily rant against 'illegal aliens,' and who daily clamor on the need to fortify the U.S.-Mexico border, are quoted as credible sources by the mainstream press," Rodriguez remains hopeful that "the majority of Americans can see through the false arguments...by these so-called patriots." Yet "this does not hold true for the mainstream media. As we are seeing with Sotomayor, all it takes is a handful of 'extremists' to control and shape the media debate."

Noting that "news organizations often encourage their journalists to appear on other platforms for promotional purposes," former TVNewser Brian Stelter reports (New York Times, 2/15/09) that, "when the National Public Radio analyst Juan Williams speaks on the Fox News Channel's highest-rated program, the radio network doesn't want any attention":

Mr. Williams, a longtime political analyst and author, is a paid contributor to both NPR and Fox News. His voice is a prominent one at Fox; he was a panelist for the network's coverage of election night and Inauguration Day. When he appears on the cable channel, he is regularly described as a "senior correspondent for NPR." While that title is accurate, NPR has asked Mr. Williams to ask Fox not to identify him that way when he appears on the O'Reilly Factor, the network's 8 p.m. opinion program.

The request was made after Mr. Williams said on the Factor that Michelle Obama has "got this Stokely-Carmichael-in-a-designer-dress thing going." The allusion to Mr. Carmichael, a leader of the black power movement of the 1960s, spurred dozens of angry e-mail messages to Alicia C. Shepard, the NPR ombudswoman, and resulted in conversations between Mr. Williams and the radio network's editors.

Shepard's response was one of concern that Williams "tends to speak one way on NPR and another on Fox"--while Fox itself took a condescending shot at NPR when announcing it would happily deceive its own viewers: "Fox swiftly said that it would drop the radio references--not only on the Factor, but on all the network's hours of programming. 'We were doing NPR a favor by even plugging them.'"

See the FAIR magazine Extra!: "Field Guide to TV's Lukewarm Liberals: How to Spot Centrist Pundits Served Up As the 'Left'" (7-8/98)