We woke up this morning to discover a minor journalistic coincidence: Two separate columns in New York newspapers lamenting the firing of Arthur Chi’en, a reporter for the local CBS affiliate. A week ago, Chi’en was let go for uttering the f-word. He had been doing a standup outside a subway stop at 6 a.m., and two men affiliated with a competing radio show started heckling him; when Chi’en thought the mike and camera were off, he turned around and said, “What the f*#k is your problem, man?” Alas, he was still on the air, and by the end of the day Chi’en been canned.
In Newsday, Ellis Henican is calling for the hapless Chi’en to be rehired. “In this plainspoken city, the F-bomb is dropped a million times before breakfast,” he writes. He’s incredulous that Chi’en was fired for “[a] single fleeting syllable…[i]n a city where second-graders curse like crusty longshoremen.”
In the New York Times, Clyde Haberman also shows sympathy for Chi’en, though he doesn’t go as far as Henican. “[U]nder the circumstances,” wonders Haberman, “was [Chi’en’s] sin so great that he deserved a career beheading?” Haberman let’s Chi’en answer the question — no — and though he doesn’t exactly weigh in himself, it’s pretty clear Haberman agrees.
And so do we.
Both columns quote Fred Reynolds, president and CEO of the Viacom Television Stations Group, who says he likes Chi’en but had no choice but to fire him. “[H]e made a huge mistake, one of the most egregious mistakes I’ve ever seen.”
Really, Mr. Reynolds? Because, as it happens, we get paid to watch a lot of television news, and the mistakes, blunders and wrong turns that we see on a daily basis are far more egregious than one ill-considered “f*#k!”
“Product experts” regularly pop up on TV news to promote individual products without disclosing they are being paid by the manufacturer.
Cable news anchors let blatantly false statements uttered by guests go unchallenged on a daily basis.
News programs air what amount to government-produced propaganda under the guise of news.
Reporters regularly ask moronic, leading questions and reach pointless conclusions that shed absolutely no light on the issue at hand.
And that’s often just before breakfast.
We don’t think reporters should be swearing on the air, of course. But anyone with even the vaguest sense of perspective realizes that Chi’en’s misstep shouldn’t be the death knell to a career. It shouldn’t even be worth getting too worked up over.
TV news has a lot of problems at all levels, local and national. But pretending that the F-word making it onto the air once in a blue moon is one of the more significant problems is ridiculous. It addresses nothing other than Viacom’s knee-jerk need for PR cover after a slightly embarrassing miscue.
And that shouldn’t destroy a career. Give the guy his job back.
–Brian Montopoli
Brian Montopoli is a writer at CJR Daily.