“Today’s Anchors Are Overpaid Superstars”: Big Lies, Little Lies, And The Punishment Of Brian Williams
The harshest penalties usually tend to be brutal, vengeful, and excessive – even when the offender is a celebrity journalist like Brian Williams. Suspended without pay from his post as the NBC Nightly News anchor for six months, Williams may be facing the end of his career in television news, which would be roughly equivalent to capital punishment.
Williams is in the public dock for telling a false story about his experiences covering the American invasion of Iraq; the disclosure humiliated him, his colleagues, and his network when exposed. For the time being, at least, he has lost the trust of many in his audience. Enforced absence from the job he loves — and wanted all his life – is a sanction that will sting far more than the barbed jokes, ugly headlines, and lost millions in salary. Off air, he may find time to engage in serious introspection, issue a forthright apology, and hope for redemption.
Troubling as his transgression was, I nevertheless hope for his redemption too.
No doubt my sympathy is spurred by the fact that I have known Williams for a long time, not as a friend or even a newsroom colleague, but as a frequent guest on a nightly cable news show he hosted and, years later, as the author of a magazine profile of him.
What I encountered then was a witty and unassuming guy from south Jersey who kept many of the same friends he had 30 years ago; an exceptionally hard-working correspondent who took reporting seriously; a history buff who avidly consumed books and newspapers to broaden his knowledge; and a dedicated professional who cherished the anchor position as a trust handed down across generations.
He always knew how lucky he was, and he certainly knows how badly he has stumbled. Whether he eventually can regain what he has lost is a matter for him and the suits at NBC to sort out. Inevitably, their calculations will include commercial as well as journalistic values. While that process unfolds, however, he deserves a few words of defense against the eager mob of executioners now swinging the ax with such gusto.
It is ironic, to put it very mildly, that more than a decade after the Iraq invasion, which resulted from official and journalistic deceptions on a vast scale, the only individual deemed worthy of punishment is a TV newsman who inflated a war story on a talk show. And it is irritating, too, that so many of the NBC anchor’s harshest critics are heard on Fox News Channel, where lying is a way of life, as Leonard Pitts, Jr., noted recently.
To recall just one especially pertinent example: Fox host Sean Hannity, who now demands Williams’ head on a stick, repeatedly told TV and radio audiences that “every penny” from his Freedom Alliance concerts would benefit the children of deceased veterans. It was a lie, because huge amounts of the proceeds were squandered on “conferences” and other dubious expenses. But Hannity got away with it because he evidently hadn’t violated any laws.
All the wingnuts ceaselessly barking about how Williams betrayed the vets could not have cared less.
Indeed, it is puzzling that Williams has excited so much frothing anger on the right, where lying and deception are routinely excused, especially about military service. (George W. Bush prevaricated blatantly about his brief stint in the Texas Air National Guard, and Ronald Reagan lied about “liberating” a Nazi death camp — but nobody on the right cared much about that, either.) If anything, Williams is resolutely nonpartisan, and when I profiled him in 2008, he seemed slightly more enthusiastic about John McCain than Barack Obama. The son of a World War II Army captain, he idolized his father and has always venerated Americans in uniform – which may help to explain, along with a muddled memory and an apparent urge to embellish, how he fell into this current difficulty.
So far as anyone has determined, Williams is not guilty of the ultimate crime, which would be filing a false news report. His exaggerations all seem to have occurred on platforms other than the Nightly News. Widely repeated accusations by a far-right blogger that he puffed his award-winning Hurricane Katrina coverage with anecdotes about flooding and floating bodies remain unproven — and there is persuasive evidence supporting his remarks.
It was during Katrina’s aftermath that Williams memorably demonstrated how well he does his work. Vanity Fair was not alone in praising his performance, noting that he “exhibited unfaltering composure, compassion, and grit,” the culmination of decades in broadcast journalism.
Today’s anchors are overpaid superstars, fighting for attention in a world no longer dominated by network news, but none of that is his fault. And in contrast to many of the charming faces on television news programs, he is an actual journalist with a long record of unblemished reporting.
So unless something worse emerges from NBC’s investigation, I share the view of Joe Summerlin, one of the brave veterans who really did survive that Chinook shoot-down in 2003, and publicly refuted Williams’ Iraq tale. His wording wasn’t generous, but his attitude is.
“Everyone tells lies,” the war veteran told the New York Times. “Every single one of us. The issue isn’t whether or not you lie. It is how you deal with it once you are caught. I thank you for stepping down for a few nights, Mr. Williams. Now can you admit that you didn’t ‘misremember’ and perform a real apology? I might even buy you a beer.”
By: Joe Conason, Editor in Chief, The National Memo, February 12, 2015
“Where Employees Are Treated With Contempt”: Obama Blasts Staples, And Reveals Larger Partisan Divide Over Workplace
Another big interview with President Obama came out today, this one from Buzzfeed, and this section, in which Obama slammed Staples for limiting employee hours, supposedly in response to Obamacare, is creating a bit of buzz:
BEN SMITH: If I can move on to the Affordable Care Act. We reported yesterday that the office supply store Staples is — I’m sure this is an issue you’ve heard about before — is telling its workers that it will fire them if they work more than 25 hours a week. A manager had told a worker we talked to that “Obama’s responsible for this policy,” and they’re putting these notices on the wall of their break room saying that. I wonder what you’d say to the CEO of Staples, Ronald Sargent, about that policy?
OBAMA: What I would say is that millions of people are benefiting from the Affordable Care Act. Satisfaction is high. The typical premium is less than 100 bucks.
SMITH: But this is a specific consequence…
OBAMA: No, I’m gonna answer the question. And that there is no reason for an employer who is not currently providing health care to their workers to discourage them from either getting health insurance on the job or being able to avail themselves of the Affordable Care Act. I haven’t looked at Staples stock lately or what the compensation of the CEO is, but I suspect that they could well afford to treat their workers favorably and give them some basic financial security, and if they can’t, then they should be willing to allow those workers to get the Affordable Care Act without cutting wages.
This is the same argument that I’ve made with respect to something like paid sick leave. We have 43 million Americans who, if they get sick or their child gets sick, are looking at either losing their paycheck or going to the job sick or leaving their child at home sick. It’s one thing when you’ve got a mom-and-pop store who can’t afford to provide paid sick leave or health insurance or minimum wage to workers — even though a large percentage of those small businesses do it because they know it’s the right thing to do — but when I hear large corporations that make billions of dollars in profits trying to blame our interest in providing health insurance as an excuse for cutting back workers’ wages, shame on them.
Obama obviously didn’t know any details of the Staples situation when he was asked the question, but Buzzfeed reported Monday that the company is becoming particularly aggressive in making sure its part-time workers don’t work more than 25 hours a week, now that an Affordable Care Act provision mandating that large companies offer health insurance to employees working over 30 hours is in effect. Staples says that the policy is years old and has nothing to do with health insurance; the employees Buzzfeed talked to say it’s being enforced with renewed vigor.
Regardless of those details, this is another example of the fundamental difference between the approach to workplace issues Obama is trying to move Democrats toward, and the ways that Republicans are pushing back. As I argued a few weeks ago when Obama raised the issue of paid sick leave — which the United States is alone among highly developed countries in not mandating — Republicans essentially want to help people get to the employer’s door, while Democrats want to go inside with the worker and help make the workplace more humane.
The Staples story illustrates the environment of so many contemporary American workplaces, where employees are treated with contempt and suspicion while being told how much they’re loved. The original Buzzfeed story contains a Staples memo threatening part-time employees with discipline up to termination if they clock in for more than 25 hours in a week. The memo ends with, “I appreciate and value you.” I’m sure that warmed the workers’ hearts.
There may be some part-time workers who find that in response to the ACA’s insurance mandate, their employers try to limit their hours in the way Staples is doing. That’s why Republicans want to change the mandate’s definition of full-time employment from 30 to 40 hours. But we should be clear about what would happen if Republicans got their way. Some number of people like those at Staples might be able to work a few more hours (though if Staples is telling the truth, it wouldn’t matter for their part-timers, because they’re adamant about keeping them below 25 hours regardless). But a much larger group — full-time hourly workers — would then be in danger of losing their health coverage.
Right now if a large company (remember, this provision only applies to large companies) wanted to cut a full-time employee’s hours so they wouldn’t have to offer her health insurance, they’d have to cut her all the way down from 40 to 29 hours, which in most cases just isn’t practical. But if the law’s definition of full-time work was 40 hours, they could cut her from 40 to 39 and be able to take away her health coverage, which would be a lot easier. One hopes that few companies would want to do that, and indeed, over nine out of ten large companies were already offering insurance to full-time workers even before the Affordable Care Act. But some would, and the number of employees at risk of losing their coverage would be much higher than it is under the current 30-hour definition.
The populist stance Obama is taking here is undoubtedly good politics; Republicans will try to say that they’re the ones on the side of the part-time workers, but voters generally understand that they’re always in favor of giving employers the power to treat employers however they wish. In any case, this kind of dispute is just one more reason why we should try to move away from a system where most people get insurance through their employers. If we did that, people wouldn’t have to rely on the generosity of their bosses, and we wouldn’t have to argue about who’s part-time and who’s full-time. And neither party has a particular stake in, or ideological commitment to, the employer-based insurance system; it’s an artifact of history. Moving beyond it would be a major change, and we all know by now that when it comes to their health coverage, people fear change. But it would be better for everybody.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Plum Line, The Washington Post, February 11, 2015
“A Time To Veto”: Exercising Authority Under The Constitution In Precisely The Way Our Founders Intended
President Obama is poised to reject legislation meant to force the approval of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, in what would be his third veto since taking office six years ago.
Pipeline proponents, naturally, are howling.
Obama, though, is exercising his veto authority under the Constitution in precisely the way our founders intended: as a check on Congressional overreach at odds with the good of the country.
The president is the only public official elected to represent all the American people. That confers upon the president, uniquely, an obligation to act on behalf of the entire country, not simply a collection of congressional districts or states, in a way that reflects the common will and advances the national interest.
The Constitution enshrines the presidential veto as a vital tool for fulfilling that role, and leaders throughout our history have found it essential. Presidents stretching back to George Washington have used the veto 2,563 times to reject legislation passed by both houses of Congress.
Ronald Reagan used his veto power 78 times — the most of any president in modern times. Obama, at the other end of the scale, has vetoed just two bills so far — fewer than any other president in 160 years.
Rarely is the veto more clearly in order as now.
Under long-established procedure, the question of whether to approve a project like a pipeline that would cross a U.S. border hangs on a single criteria: is the project in the national interest? It is the president’s job — and properly so — to make that determination.
In assessing whether the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline meets the criteria, Obama has put the U.S. State Department in the lead, with expertise added from an array of other government agencies that oversee commerce, transportation, energy, environment and other important areas central to the national interest.
The Republican-led House gave final congressional approval today to a bill meant to force approval of the tar sands pipeline in a way that would usurp presidential authority, short-circuit the deliberative process of informed evaluation already underway and supersede the president’s obligation to determine whether the project is good for the country.
Those are three good reasons to veto the bill.
There is, though, one more, and it goes to the heart of our system of checks and balances.
The tar sands pipeline is not a project designed to help this country. It is a plan to pipe some of the dirtiest oil on the planet — tar sands crude mined from Canada’s boreal forest using some of the most destructive industrial practices ever devised — through the breadbasket of America to Gulf coast refineries where most of the fuel will be shipped overseas.
It would create 35 permanent American jobs, according to the Canadian company that wants to build the pipeline. And the tar sands crude would generate 17 percent more of the carbon pollution that is driving climate change than conventional crude oil produces.
It would put our heartland at grave and needless risk of the kind of pipeline accidents we’ve seen nearly 6,000 times over just the past two decades. It would cross more than 1,000 rivers, streams and other waterways and pass within a mile of some 3,000 underground wells that supply irrigation and drinking water to communities and farms across Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska. And it would deepen our addiction to the fossil fuels of the past when we need to be investing in the clean energy options of the future.
That is not a project that serves our national interest. It is, instead, a project that’s about big profits for big oil, big payoffs for industry allies on Capitol Hill and big pollution for the rest of us.
If that’s what the Republican leadership in Congress wants to drop on the president’s desk, here’s what’s going to happen. The president is going to do what other presidents going back to George Washington have done more than 2,500 times: stand up for what’s best for all Americans, and veto this terrible bill.
By: Rhea Suh, The Blog, The Huffington Post, February 11, 2015
“Walker Latest To Fall Into London Quicksand”: The British Just Don’t Know What To Make Of GOP Extremism In The 21st century
Eventually, Republicans are really going to have to stop going to London.
When Mitt Romney went to the British capital, it was a disaster. When Bobby Jindal went to London, he became a laughingstock. When Chris Christie crossed the pond, he managed to stumble on vaccinations, of all things.
And so, when Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) arrived in London yesterday, there was a lingering fear: how exactly would he manage to screw this up? Now we know.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) on Wednesday dodged a question about whether he believes in evolution. Speaking at the Chatham House foreign policy think tank London, Walker was asked: “Are you comfortable with the idea of evolution? Do you believe in it?”
“For me, I am going to punt on that one as well,” he said. “That’s a question politicians shouldn’t be involved in one way or another. I am going to leave that up to you.
If you watch the video of the exchange, note that the interviewer prefaces the question by saying the issue is of particular interest when posed to “senior Republicans when they come to London.” The subtle – or perhaps not so subtle – implication is that the British just don’t know what to make of GOP extremism in the 21st century.
Indeed, after Walker refused to answer the question about whether he’s comfortable with modern biology, the interviewer, clearly taken aback by the governor’s reticence, responded with genuine incredulity. “Really?” he said when Walker “punted” on the issue. The interviewer quickly added, “Any British politician, right- or left-wing, would laugh [at the question] and say, ‘Of course evolution’s true.’”
As well they should.
And while I can appreciate the British curiosity about American Republicans, it’s worth emphasizing that the UK simply doesn’t have a major political party as far to the right as today’s Republican Party. It’s no wonder they marvel at the oddity of the GOP’s extremism.
Closer to home, let’s not overlook the fact that the recent Republican track record on scientific issues has been quite woeful of late. Just over the last few months, we’ve seen prominent GOP officials balk at climate science, contraception, vaccinations, post-bathroom hand-washing, and now evolutionary biology.
I shudder to think what the party will come up with next, though if gravity becomes a partisan political issue, all bets are off.
Postscript: I’d just add that Walker’s response to today’s question is obviously unsustainable. If he and his staff aren’t working on a real answer for American journalists who’ll soon press the governor for a batter response, they should be.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February 11, 2015
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