I work in the financial services sector. I have been advised by my employer that while I may have an expert opinion, offering that opinion without the prior approval of my employer, if I represent myself as being from my employer or speaking on behalf of my employer, is strictly prohibited. In fact, I've been advised doing so could imperil my employment if my comments would somehow purport to speak for the company without its approval or might even be seen to embarrass or otherwise compromise the company's stance on a topic.
Juan Williams, as a paid correspondent for NPR, undoubtedly has been given similar instructions about what the limits of his authority to speak as an NPR correspondent are. He presented himself on Fox News as an NPR correspondent, thereby speaking on behalf of NPR. Whether or not he intended to speak on their behalf when he made his now famous remark is not material.
He was identified as an NPR correspondent; that meant that he was presenting himself as affiliated with NPR and therefore his words could be reasonably seen as in part being reflective of the people at NPR. I strongly suspect Williams had been previously warned not to do so, further, I'm about 100% certain he had the same general warning all employees nowadays get, namely, don't speak for the company unless you have the company's approval to say what you say. Williams didn't.
If I had done what Williams had done, I'd have been fired for speaking without the approval of the company. What NPR did was no different and no different than something those on the right would have otherwise approved of. Williams isn't entitled to say anything he likes when he's a paid correspondent and presented as "from NPR", he's entitled to say what NPR has agreed with him he can say as speaking on their behalf, and nothing more. He violated (almost certainly) company policy, written warning and probably verbal warning - and for it he rightly deserved to lose his paycheck from NPR. Freedom of speech doesn't extend to your employment, if you think so, go tell your boss she or he is an idiot, or go tell a member of the opposite sex you think they've got a hot body, or go out on the street and tell company secrets or say your company thinks Muslims are scary. See what happens. Williams did the latter, whether you recognize it or not.
Well said Pen. This is the aspect of the controversy which seems to be most widely overlooked, or perhaps misunderstood.
ReplyDeleteThis is exactly the same kind of caution about being perceived as biased, or making statements at odds with a media entity's control of content associated with their name that I believe was the calculated 'spin' part of this story - the push that there would not be widespread appreciation of this kind of policy.
Williams himself has asserted that NPR had been unhappy with him for a period of time because of such an identification as an NPR senior correspondent when appearing on Fox.
It was this same Bill O'Reilly that were so irate at the perception Ms. Sherrod made offensive statements in the context of doing her job that he opened his show with calling for her to be out of HER job.
It turned out to be just another case of someone on the right messing with deliberate, deceptive alteration - they like to call it severe editing - that obscured what Ms. Sherrod really said.
O'Reilly is opposing Juan Williams firing ONLY because Williams was supporting the earlier islamophobic position O'Reilly had taken.
Ol' Bill and the rest of Pox News doesn't really give a damn about free speech, or he would never have been so quick to call for Sherrod's ouster without checking into the facts. He didn't want Sherrod to be employed when she said something about a group of people to which HE belonged.
But GOD FORBID NPR should be standing up for muslims, or perceived muslims, or for religious tolerance, or for their content and employee ehtics...yessirree.
Thanks Pen!