UPS Pulls Its Ads from O'Reilly: He Deserves It But. . .

I'm torn.  Really.  Nobody hates Bill O'Reilly and all he stands for more than I do.  And when he went after my former colleague Amanda Terkel by sending a producer to prey on her on her vacation, a camera alongside, I was troubled.  It's not the news gathering I was trained to do.

On one hand, it was totally unethical to follow a writer around and harass her for comments made about an anchorman.  It's bizarre and a ridiculous waste of editorial resources, especially when the world of journalism is in such economic chaos.  Chasing her down the street, peppering her with questions, when no one ever asked her for an interview she probably would have granted - it's all disgusting.

On the other hand, when we push advertisers to withdraw their ads from a show, we are doing something we ourselves opposed during the time of great TV from Norman Lear to Stephen Bochco to Diane English, among others.  All in the Family, Hill Street Blues, Murphy Brown - they were among many fine, pioneering programs with a progressive bent that faced threats from major evangelical and other religious and political organizations like the Family Research Council.  Their weapon every time was a threat to advertisers to remove their ads from these and other programs, or face boycotts.  Of course there were no blogs in those days so it was tougher to organize but these people were scary and sometimes effective.  We always defended free speech.  Those shows deserved protection because they aired on licensed public airways.  O'Reilly airs on cable - people pay to watch it so maybe that makes it a bit different.

On the other hand, (I know, this is the third hand) the Amanda gambit was totally unethical behavior, designed, I suspect, as chilling effect on its own.  It raises the price for honest advocacy, exploiting the protection of the First Amendment to do so.

I guess what I'm saying is that what O'Reilly and his goons do is reprehensible; in my mind it's somewhat worse when the "victim" is a tiny woman, anything but threatening, who is on vacation.  But using the weapons that I saw as so dangerous when they were aimed at "us"  -- I'm not so sure.  What do you think?

Comments

[Cynthia Samuels]

Fair enough in some of this but one point that I guess wasn't clear enough was that I said that people who have the power to keep themselves isolated require different measures from mere "civilians" and that an effort should be made to get a comment the "old fashioned way" before going nuclear. Thanks for the comment.

[Dan]

I think that you make several assumptions:

- they did not request an interview or comment
- if offered she would have accepted

That said, if we as a society are going to allow ambush journalism, as evidenced by stalking public and private figures, sticking a camera in their face and asking for comment on a story; then no person, regardless of their stature should be out of bounds. Would we critique the tactic if used against, say, Dick Cheney or Tim Geithner? Probably not.

I don't support this kind of journalism for anyone, but if we are going to condemn it for some, we should be condemning it for all, and not critiquing it for some just because of their gender or physical stature.