In America, talk about race is complex and fraught with danger. It is easy for people of good will to stumble when discussing it - and then trip a landmine. One recent explosion seems to have led to the firing, in late June, of respected Politico reporter Joe Williams.
You may have heard the story. Williams, a White House correspondent for Politico and the former Deputy Chief of the Washington Bureau of the Boston Globe, was suspended and then fired after Breitbart.com posted a clip of him talking on MSNBC. In the quick clip, Williams, who is black, said, “But when [Mitt Romney] comes on Fox and Friends, they’re like him, they’re white folks who are very much relaxed in their own company, so it’s a very stark contrast I think and a problem that he’s not been able to solve to date and he’s going to have to work harder if he’s going to try to compete.” Translation: Romney is more comfortable around white people.
In a memo to staffers, Politico editors wrote that “Politico journalists have a clear and inflexible responsibility to cover politics fairly and free of partisan bias,” and that Williams’s appearance on MSNBC, as well as some Twitter posts, violated that standard.
Did Williams indeed overstep clear ethical boundaries of journalism? Or are there racial overtones that affected his bosses’ decision, as some in the blogosphere think?
A fuller clip shows that Williams’s MSNBC remarks were made while a few commentators were discussing the difficulty Romney may be having with Latino voters. It seems that Williams is making an observation here, not calling Romney a racist.
And making observations of this nature is partly what Politico liked about him.
Poynter notes that Williams was transferred to a reporter position, after originally being hired as Politico’s deputy White House editor, so that he could show up as a television commentator more often. As Poynter reported, “Williams’s move to a reporter slot was supposed to be a win-win for all involved: Politico got someone who it thought was telegenic, who happened to be a person of color, to help build its brand on TV news shows while Williams, in turn, was able to hone broadcast skills that he’d rarely used as a print journalist.”
In other words, Politico wanted Williams to comment on the news, not just to be a reporter. Commenting on the news on TV was part of his job.
This blurring of boundaries between reporters and commentators is everywhere nowadays, said Professor Leonard Steinhorn, director of the Public Communication Division, School of Communications, at American University. And, he said, it is hurting journalism.
“Journalists report facts. But that definition doesn’t seem to exist anymore,” he said in a thoughtful phone interview. “This is the age of analysis journalism and advocacy journalism and every analyst and advocate brings their own worldview into their interpretation.”
Steinhorn said that he has been on news programs with Politico editors and that their interpretation of the news didn’t always jive with his understanding of the facts. This is very widespread across respected news outlets, he said, not limited to Politico. “Increasingly, reporters cover themselves with conditional phrasing. If Joe Williams had used ‘appears’ or ‘seems,’ what could they say? You see it on CBS, in The New York Times, all the time.”
He added, “The poor guy seems to be a little bit of a scapegoat, when a larger issue is going on.”
So that’s one piece of this: The industrywide mixing of reporting and commentary leaves journalists open to the charge that they are biased. But Steinhorn says that journalists are professionals, and the great majority of them are able to be excellent reporters for their outlets even though they leak their personal opinions online or on air. If Williams did not do this - if, in fact, his reporting for Politico was biased - then an editor should have caught it, and that should have been the reason given for his dismissal. But if his reporting was “by the book,” Steinhorn said, “This wasn’t a fireable offense.”
The second question is whether Politico fired Williams because he was a black man talking about race.
Ah, the race card. Smelling out possible 'racism' is a particular obsession of a certain kind of journalist. The question would be more relevant if the author had been able to cite a 'White' journalist who had gotten away with comments and tweets as offensive as those by Williams.
#1 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Fri 20 Jul 2012 at 12:25 PM
Good to see that CJR picked a neutral journalist to write about the issue.
Point is, Williams got what plenty of others have gotten for intemperate and stupid remarks. As well, his comments went beyond race. He also made dirty jokes about Ann Romney. What kind of numbskull would put that material out under his own name?
And what, pray tell, does our alumna of 365.gay think would have happened to a reporter who made a similar joke about the couple in the White House?
The left started this type of thing when it demanded that anyone who said anything which the left disagreed be fired on the grounds of racism. It's happened more than once to conservatives who never made a dirty joke about the First Lady.
Now the shoe is on other foot. How does it feel?
Anyway, plenty of other leftwing journalists who have said much worse are still working. So don't worry, you still control the mainstream media.
#2 Posted by newspaperman, CJR on Fri 20 Jul 2012 at 03:55 PM
It's fine for every political journalist in Washington to openly ruminate about President Obama’s white working-class problem - (Glenn Thrush - POLITICO.com) and that Working-class whites wary of Obama - (Alex Leary - Tampa Bay Times - POLITICO.com) but POLITICO won't tolerate a black man talking about Mitt Romney, even though that was his job.
POLITICO, and political journalism in general, suffers severely from a diversity problem and that's been noted for years and years. But ultimately, POLITICO is beholden to Drudge and the extremist rightwing blogworld and Williams is just another scalp for them. That's all there is to it -- beltway journalism in abject terror of the angry, vicious right. ALL of them, not just POLITICO. There's no need to pontificate further on it.
#3 Posted by James, CJR on Fri 20 Jul 2012 at 07:52 PM
It is remarkable that Afro-American (black) journalists working in the so-called mainstream media must always bite their lips before making even the slightest non-conventional observation.
The result, in journalistic terms, is that a wealth of experience goes unnoticed because the decision-makers prefer not to recognize that experience.
It is a problem that black journalists also have in Europe. Even when analyses and observations are incorrect we must play the game by writing stories that we know are piffle, but which managers and readers see as the reality.
We do a serious disservice to our readers with this conservatism.
#4 Posted by Hal Austin, CJR on Wed 25 Jul 2012 at 09:12 AM
To James, are you saying that journalists don't talk about the problems Romney and the Republicans have with African-American or Hispanic voters? It's one thing to talk about a candidate and voting blocs. It's another thing for Politico to be asked to tolerate a journalist who makes penis jokes about a candidate toward whom he is obviously hostile. Williams retains credibility with folks like you, but sometimes the MSM is interesting in preaching being the choir. Not usually, but sometimes.
#5 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Wed 25 Jul 2012 at 12:35 PM