This weekend WJLA-TV announced that it had fired veteran anchorman Doug McKelway for a verbal confrontation this summer with the station’s news director. McKelway is a longtime journalist in the Capitol and his termination raised questions about the limits on fair commentary for anchors in political coverage.
In a brief story on environmentalists protesting the influence of the oil industry in Congress, McKelway referred to the small demonstration as “largely representing far-left environmental groups.” He went on to note that such protests “may be a risky strategy because the one man who has more campaign contributions from BP than anybody else in history is now sitting in the Oval Office, President Barack Obama, who accepted $77,051 in campaign contributions from BP.” It is, in my view, clearly wrong to suggest that the protesters were “far left” since many environmentalists are appalled with the level of influence of the industry in Congress and the Administration. The second comment, however, was fair game in my view and has been noted by other journalists in covering such stories — though it has been challenged on the grounds that it came from employees as opposed to company itself.
The second segment is more problematic. He added in a later piece that the Senate was unlikely to pass “cap-and-trade” legislation this year, because “the Democrats are looking at the potential for huge losses in Congress come the midterm elections. And the last thing they want to do is propose a huge escalation in your electric bill, your utility bill, before then.” That seems well over the line for reporting as opposed to commentary. It is the very talking point line put out by conservative advocates to justify more drilling and less regulation. It is greatly disputed and should not have been reported as a fact. However, the question is whether it justified termination.
That coverage led to a confrontation with ABC7’s news director and general manager, Bill Lord. In a letter to McKelway this week where McKelway was accused of insubordination and misconduct. It was the argument with Lord that was the direct justification for the termination decision.
McKelway has accused local news of having a liberal and pro-democratic tilt in the past. He comes from a long line of Washington journalists in his family. He also attracted criticism in 2009 when he was accused of threatening to punch a gay blogger over his practice of “outing” politicians who are in the closet.
McKelway is well known in my area not just as a newsman but as a musician. My family and I have enjoyed his performances with a local blue grass band that plays at restaurants and other venues. He is a very talented banjo player. It is a sad way to end a long career at the station, but McKelway is reportedly working on a book and could still find another venue as a journalist or commentator.
Source: Washington Post
You know, Elaine. Fake Christians. Like the ones who think they can force their beliefs on others or legislate morals. Just like their brethren the Fake Muslims. Any religion that relies on coercion is a falsehood. Really good ideas, including those found in religions, will stand on their own and need no coercion. Just like a God needs no humans or their assistance of any kind to do what it wishes. Coercion is a human game. A God can just make it so.
REAL Christians? That would mean that there must be FAKE Christians? How is one to tell one from the other? Things are so complicated these days.
Yes …
BINGO!
Gyges: Oops. I should have said REAL Christians. LOL
Sorry for the imprecision.
Hubris
LOL
Nice to meet you! Are you new here?
Yep …
Come on, “No True Scotsman.” That’ll complete a row on my logical fallacy bingo card.
Tootie:
you go , give em hell!
Alex, I’d like “arguements you’ll never hear on fox news for 200 please”.
Tootie,
Where as your implicate statement that Christians are all on the right is completely honest?
ABC, NBC, and CBS have lied about Republicans, Christians, and conservatives for over half a century. They don’t lie overtly of course, instead, they deceive the public with editing and word games. Left wingers can achieve their agenda only by deception and dishonesty.
For decades they portrayed the right as evil and the left as good. They did it by unflattering camera shots and photo,s and hacked-up sound bites by right wingers taken out of context. And they contrasted that to glowing depictions of left wingers who cared for the poor and downtrodden (which is a lie).
All of this amounts to a lie of the deceptive kind. It has done much to destroy America.
This is how they did it and continue to do it:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/static/profiles/DianeSawyer/GoodMorningBias.aspx
McKelway always struck me as a just another blow dry newsbot. Good to know he has another gig. The much beloved Joel Daly (Cleveland and later and longer in Chicago) was a C&W musician and kept at it after his news days were largely over.
McKelway didn’t have his facts straight and seems likely to turn into another Bernard Goldberg or John “the moustache” Stossel, whining his way to guest shots on Fox or arguing the usual rightwing blather on CNN. Significantly WJLA is owned by Joe Albritton, who is no liberal.
“But when it counted, Knight Ridder’s reporting too often went unnoticed—in part because more powerful media outlets were too timid or arrogant to attempt to build on Knight Ridder’s many scoops”
Elaine,
You’ve gone to the heart of the matter. Even Cy Hersch today finds his stories not publicized widely enough to reach public
cognizance. If a news story breaks that differs from the corporate message, the general public never hears of it.
I probably meant director, not producer. I don’t know all the names of those media jobs.
I am a liberal progressive (without a party) but I am also a business manager that has been in charge of a division of a public company. Insubordination is a firing offense, and the faster the better. Employees do not get to use company resources to promote their own ideology EVER. I wouldn’t let them use the copier for fliers, I wouldn’t let them use a second of my airtime, or the makeup artists, and set, and cameramen, and producer, and graphics artists that are all paid for by company funds.
Part of the FOX product is partisan sniping and derision. They revel in it and consciously profit from it, their CEO-approved marketing strategy is to appeal to this niche. Fox News anchors don’t have any freedom of speech either, none of them can stray far from their reservation without being fired as well.
I see nothing wrong with this firing. If the News Director felt that partisanship could damage his ratings or endanger his advertising base, it was HIS JOB to reign in the anchor, and if the anchor refuses or gets emotional, it was HIS JOB to fire the guy, or lose any semblance of authority over his staff.
As a manager I much preferred a cooperative atmosphere and I decreed very, very little, but in the face of outright mutiny and an outright refusal to follow (unquestionably legal) orders, firing is the right answer.
Mike S.
I still think there may be some–though not many–real news organizations left. They may not be the organizations that most people go to for their news. I also believe there are REAL investigative journalists–including Jeremy Scahill, Jane Mayer, and Seymour Hersh–working to dig up the truth.
I remember reading/hearing about the Knight Ritter organization not buying the Bush administartion’s talking points in the run-up to the Iraq War
From Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
Extra! March/April 2006
Wrong on Iraq? Not Everyone
Four in the mainstream media who got it right
By Steve Rendall
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2847
Excerpt:
Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay
Knight Ridder’s Washington bureau didn’t take the White House propaganda campaign at face value either. In a September 6, 2002 story, “Lack of Hard Evidence of Iraqi Weapons Worries Top U.S. Officials,” the newspaper chain’s Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay reported, “Senior U.S. officials with access to top-secret intelligence on Iraq say they have detected no alarming increase in the threat that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein poses to American security and Middle East stability.” Throughout the run-up to the war, the Knight Ridder reporters filed story after story raising questions about Bush administration claims, with headlines like “Some in Bush Administration Have Misgivings About Iraq Policy” (10/8/02) and “Infighting Among U.S. Intelligence Agencies Fuels Dispute Over Iraq” (10/27/02).
Knight Ridder’s skeptical reporting stood apart from the more credulous coverage regularly put forth by most other mainstream outlets. When the New York Times reported on the aluminum tubes story, “U.S. Says Hussein Intensified Quest for A-Bomb Parts” (9/8/02), it emphasized the White House view that the tubes were hard evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program, and downplayed dissenting views. Knight Ridder published a very different piece, “CIA Report Reveals Analysts’ Split Over Extent of Iraqi Nuclear Threat” (10/4/02), recording strong dissent by prominent experts and portraying the tubes’ purpose as anything but a settled issue. Indeed, in the end, the dissenters were right.
Strobel and Landay received accolades for their tough reporting from some journalism establishment outlets. “Almost alone among national news organizations, Knight Ridder had decided to take a hard look at the administration’s justifications for war,” wrote Michael Massing in the New York Review of Books (2/26/04). Writing in the American Journalism Review (8–9/04), Steve Ritea commended the Knight Ridder reporters:
For about a year and a half, the pair had filed compelling stories on the issue and, on many occasions, it seemed like they were banging the drum alone. It wasn’t until earlier this year, when it became increasingly apparent Hussein had not been stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, that other news outlets grew more critical of the administration.
But when it counted, Knight Ridder’s reporting too often went unnoticed—in part because more powerful media outlets were too timid or arrogant to attempt to build on Knight Ridder’s many scoops.
“I’m beginning to wonder how many of our news organizations are “REAL news organizations.” I’d say, in this day and age, we don’t have news media–we have corporate media.”
Elaine,
good point but I think the time to start wondering is past, replaced by absolute certainty.
The news media is owned by corporations with different political agendas. We all know that. Sidney Harmon just bought Newsweek and their better journalists are leaving. Howard Fineman is going to the Huffington Post.
Elaine M.,
No. It probably would have been better to have said: “If one thinks…” to convey that I do not think that _you_ hold that view. I can see you’re skeptical of the integrity of the MSM already.