Muzzled (32 page)

To my mind, the only way to confront these fears is to face them head-on. That means talking to one another. It means telling one another how we feel, including those we don’t see eye to eye with. We have to acknowledge that none of us knows everything. We have to accommodate ourselves to new circumstances and facts and seek peace, compromise, and progress. I am not saying that any of us should throw principle out the window. But my career as a professional reporter, columnist, and commentator has taught me that no one has a monopoly on the answers.

Not all media is about fright, fury, and fear. There are still first-rate, trustworthy professional journalists making contributions to the great American conversation. Putting aside their editorial pages and simply focusing on their news coverage, that includes the
Wall Street Journal
, the
New York Times
, the
Washington Post
, the
Los Angeles Times, USA Today
, and many other publications that provide real journalism with integrity.

And then there is National Public Radio. Despite the circumstances under which their organization threw me out, I continue to have tremendous respect for many of the news reporters at NPR who do excellent work every day. My problem remains with NPR’s management, its holier-than-thou culture, its editorial bias, and the corruption in its fund-raising from nonprofit foundations that are pushing one agenda or another while claiming not to be advertisers.

Let me end this book by going back to where I started. One question I get asked a lot, even to the point of being pressured by friends who are liberals, is where I stand on government funding of NPR. Republicans in Congress, citing my unjust firing as evidence of NPR’s bias, voted to defund NPR in early 2011. Many of my longtime colleagues in journalism called on me to rise above any vindictive instinct and declare my support for NPR.

Despite the way I was treated by NPR’s CEO, I did not call for defunding NPR. I am first and foremost a journalist, and NPR is an important platform for journalism in an era when quality journalism is in decline.

Nonetheless, I have come to the conclusion that it is time to defund NPR. And despite what some may think, this is not the small-minded spite of a vindictive mind.

There is something far bigger than my feelings at stake here. NPR journalism has come to embody elitism, arrogance, and the resentments of its highly educated, upper-income managers and funders. Any approach to journalism that is at variance with NPR management’s ideas is considered justification for banishment.

The personal attacks on my work and my integrity revealed to me that NPR’s leadership has lost sight of the fact that good journalism is the essential product of NPR. People like Vivian Schiller and Ellen Weiss came to think of themselves as smarter than anyone else in the room and were self-righteous in their pursuit of funding from the federal government and nonprofit groups. That hunger for money led NPR’s former top fund-raiser to be caught in a videotape sting operation engaged in a grubby attempt to get money from the Muslim Brotherhood, a group with links to terrorists.

The NPR fund-raising exec heard on that tape felt free to pander to the Muslim Brotherhood by disparaging Jews, calling the entire Tea Party racist, and announcing his pride in NPR’s decision to fire me because “NPR stood for … nonracist, nonbigoted, straightforward telling of the news … and [Williams] lost all credibility, and that breaks your basic ethics as a journalist.”

He opined that “liberals today might be more educated, fair, and balanced than conservatives.”

His comments opened a window on the mind-set of top NPR managers, who had lost sight of the importance of journalism as a basis for the honest debate so essential in a democratic society. They could not see their own corruption in angling for donations from a group of terrorists.

And their values infected the NPR news operation. NPR editors and journalists found themselves caught in a game of trying to please a leadership team who did not want to hear stories on the air about conservatives, the poor, or anyone who didn’t fit their profitable design of NPR as the official voice of college-educated, white, liberal-leaning, upper-income America.

In the middle of the congressional debate over NPR funding, a Democratic New York congressman, Steve Israel, sent out a fund-raising letter that included an appeal to liberals to send donations to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee so it could protect NPR as a counter to Republicans who wanted “the likes of Glenn Beck, Limbaugh and Sarah Palin to dominate the airwaves.”

The congressman made the case better than any conservative critic that NPR had become news by and for liberal Democrats.

The
New York Times
and other journalism outlets may have budget struggles, but they do fine journalism without accepting government support. NPR has a valuable news product that is prized by many listeners. I believe it can attract the financial support it needs from advertisers, sponsors, and its audience without compromising the work of its journalists. It doesn’t need government funding.

House majority leader Eric Cantor later said: “Why should we allow taxpayer dollars to be used [by NPR] to advocate one ideology?” Cantor is right. NPR’s troubled management team turned its fund-raising efforts into a weapon against its essential product: top-quality, balanced reporting and analysis. They lost sight of journalism in their obsession with funding.

Ultimately, the idea of government-funded media does not fit the United States. No matter the good intentions behind the funding of public radio and the excesses of conservative talk radio, journalists should not be doing news to please any single constituency or any elected official out of fear of losing that funding. The tremendous variety of sources for news—in print, broadcast, on the radio, and on the Internet—also argues against the U.S. government making a priority of giving financial support to NPR while cutting funding for school breakfast programs, college scholarships, and health care.

I am still an NPR fan. I find that most NPR stations providing local and state news coverage are often singular pillars of information for their communities. But I am no fan of the self-serving, self-righteous thinking that has dominated the management of the NPR news operation in Washington for too long and has tainted a once-great journalistic brand. I am still hoping that the NPR board can right the ship and put better managers in place. Part of that transition will be
to reaffirm the idea of journalistic independence by ending NPR’s reliance on federal funding. It will be a step toward good health for NPR and the end of the travesty of journalists doing news with an eye to pleasing donors, whether they are political parties, foundations, government officials, or wealthy private citizens.

My recent experience at NPR is a timely reminder for all of us. What is at stake is the cherished principle of free speech and its extensions in free press, freedom of individual thought, and freedom of individual expression.

At the White House Christmas party in 2010, David Westin, the former president of ABC News, came up to me and said he’d been in the New York newsroom when he noticed my face on several monitors simultaneously and asked what had happened. When he was told I had been fired and why, he turned to his top editors and said: “I didn’t know we’d reached that point in this country … where you can’t say what’s on your mind, you can’t say you are afraid.”

Free speech imposes a responsibility on all of us, when it comes to matters of national importance and consequence, to speak seriously and honestly and to allow others to do the same.

In order to do that we need to listen to one another. We must respect facts; facts do matter. When our fellow citizens or institutions, public or private, renege on the good faith needed to recognize facts in service to our most vital national exchanges—critical debates about security, economics, and politics—that is when we should be most on guard and concerned.
The identity game—the game of politicians and political and media personalities—encourages most of us to be blind to any fact or point of data that puts a crack in our ideological shield, the thinking that supposedly “defines” our group.

Avoiding that end is the heart of Orwell’s
1984
. In the novel the nation has one political party. It controls the nation’s history and carefully monitors what is said to limit any unapproved, rebellious line of thought. Every contrary word is banned. The purpose of controlling language in the fictional tale is, in the words of one character, “to narrow the range of thought [until] … there will be no thought, as we understand it.… Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think—orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

That is the danger of limiting honest debate. That is the danger of letting ourselves be muzzled. No journalistic organization should place itself in the role of the thought police. No Americans who embrace democracy and respect free speech should be willing to put fixed ideological positions ahead of honest exchanges.

Such cowardice is the essence of putting ourselves before our country. If we can’t, as individual Americans, sacrifice our egos for the greater good, then “E Pluribus Unum” is only a phrase from a dead language.

And that we cannot accept.

It is easy to find out who your friends are when you are publicly lambasted and fired. They are the ones standing by you. The hard part is being that friend.

To those friends who reached out to me in the middle of my crisis to offer strength and resolve—thank you.

Thank you to the skilled editors and researchers who helped me tell this story. That begins with Eric Lupfer at William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, who helped me pull together research, schedules, and ideas. Roger Scholl, a terrific editor, at Crown has been the guiding, caring hand throughout the project. Molly Stern, the publisher, gave life to this book with her strong conviction that the story had to be told. Through the compressed writing and publishing schedule for creating this book, Eric and Roger stayed with me all the way. Gentlemen, thank you.

Joe Sangiorgio helped me collect my thoughts and draft bright concepts. Michael Santorelli, Andrew Carter, and Kevin Golen worked fast and effectively as passionate researchers who went way beyond the call of duty to put themselves into this book. I am grateful to each of you.

My agents at William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, Henry Reisch and Suzanne Gluck, are masters of their craft. They are even better people. Henry, I am lucky to have you on my team. You play best when the game is on the line.

The Crown team behind this book includes Penny Simon, Annsley Rosner, Julie Cepler, Mark Birkey, and Logan Balestrino. This is an all-star team of book publishing.

In the first furies of this storm, when I was stunned by what was happening, Bill Shine, executive vice president of Fox News, and Sean Hannity displayed grace, friendship, and strength. Michael
Clemente, vice president for news, took charge of masterfully guiding me through the first days of telling my side of the story and keeping me on track despite the big stakes and all the pressures at play. Irena Brigante and Stephanie Kelly led me through the media blitz. Lynne Jordal Martin’s energy and smarts made me look good at
FoxNews.com
.

People always ask me—
What is Bill O’Reilly really like?
As the old saying goes, actions speak louder than words. Bill is the real deal in standing with an embattled friend.

Roger Ailes, the president and CEO of Fox News, cares about people and the news business, and he loves his country. I am a big fan, a loyal friend, and honored to work with a living legend.

Hugo Gurdon, editor in chief of The Hill, reached out to me from the first days of the whirlwind to offer me the chance to write for him. Jim Finkelstein, chairman, gave the go-ahead to bring me on board, and I deeply appreciate that show of faith at a critical moment. Keith White and Emmanuel Touhey are good editors who have made the column work. A. B. Stoddard, my colleague at The Hill and Fox, is the epitome of a good reporter and trusted guide.

My Fox friends kept me going during the whirlwind and after. Thanks to Arthur Aidala, David Asman, Bret Baier, Ann Banker, Dan Banker, Peter Barnes, Porter Berry, Eric Bolling, Brian Boughton, Diane Brandi, John Cuneo, Lana Britt, Betsy Burkhard, Juan Casanas, Dana Cash, Caitlin Clark, Shannon Bream, Andrea DeVito, Brian Doherty, Alex Finland, John Finley, Nate Fredman, Lauren Fritts, Victor Garcia, Jenna Gibson, Don Grannum, Jennifer Griffin, Cherie Grzech, Kata Hall, Mary Katharine Ham, Stephen Hayes, Bill Hemmer, Cory Howard, Brit Hume, Rhonda Jenkins, Eliana Johnson, Mae Joo, Megyn Kelly, Stephanie Kelly, Dana Klinghoffer, Charles Krauthammer, Mary Kreinbihl, Bill Kristol, Judy Laterza, Mara Liasson, Jennie Lubart, Stacia Lynds, Lori Martin, Gwen Marder, Chris
Mills, Ron Mitchell, Andrew Napolitano, Clay Rawson, Cristina Robbins, Doug Rohrbeck, James Rosen, Marty Ryan, Bill Sammon, Shep Smith, Amy Sohnen, Seneca Stevens, Chris Stirewalt, David Tabacoff, Mary-Ellen Tasillo, Lauren Tate, Nicole Tripodi, Lamonte Tyler, Claire Villaverde, Chris Wallace, Jesse Watters, Makeda Wubneh, and Eldad Yaron.

Thanks to my friends at American Program Bureau, beginning with its leaders, Perry Steinberg and Robert Walker.

My personal friends know I love them, but here is a public thank-you: Thank you Charles Cobb, Bill and Cynthianna Lightfoot, James Loadholt, Courtland Milloy, Barrett and Judy Nnoka, Sec. Alphonso Jackson and Marcia Jackson, Diane Thomson, Lucille Blair, Bess Rothenberg, Michael Hicks, Donna Brazile, Robert Traynham, David Brand, Cheryl Gibert, Dante James, Armstrong Williams, Gabe Mehretaab, Fritz and Diane Bech, Dean Elliott, Bob Wilson, Catherine Cook-Holmes, Jerralynn Ness, Cathleen O’Brian, Scott Simon, Alex Chadwick, Richard Strauss, Paul Thaler, Bill Burton, Elizabeth Burch, Serena Jones, Chris Cowan, Bill and Gail Herald, and my trusted minister, Father John Harmon.

My brother and sister, Roger and Elena, are lifelong treasures. My in-laws are always surrounding me with love: Scooter and Leathia West, Ginger Macomber, and Beat Jenny. Thanks to my cousins, Ligia, Gracie, Haroldo, Ricardo, Calito, Rilda, Armonia, Ruby, Linda. And much love to the next generation, Jonathan, Jonathan, Alexandria, Marisa, Ashely, Christopher, Paul, Chip, Omar, and Nadia.