Witch hunt on air

By Joel Thurtell

Hear about NPR’s name change?

It’s MPR.

McCarthy Public Radio.

Instead of covering the news, they’re making it.

With a witch hunt.

Used to be, people with unpopular political persuasions got beat up by government agencies.

Ever hear of the Red Squads?

J. Edgar Hoover?

And, of course, the pacesetter for persecutors, Joseph McCarthy, the drunken Wisconsin senator who treated people whose politics he disliked as if they were dangerous criminals.

But McCarthy was an elected official, who eventually was un-elected.

Now, the ratting is done by fellow journalists.

In the case of Lisa Simeone, a freelance reporter who was fired by NPR for doing public relations work for the Occupy Wall Street movement, the stool pigeon was Roll Call.

How do you un-elect officials at NPR?

How to you teach reporters at Roll Call to stop being skunks and quit spraying on fellow journalists?

Simeone was even fired from her radio show about opera.

Opera!

Have they no shame?

How do you educate journalists to understand that in a free society, every citizen has a right to his or her views on politics, religion, sex, whatever?

How do you explain to them that opera has nothing to do with Occupy Wall Street?

Journalists, whether freelance or staffers, are citizens. They have a right to act on their views without interference from their employer.

Yet many media companies have so-called “ethics” rules that forbid their employees from exercising their rights as U.S. citizens.

Remember last year, when MSNBC cracked down on Keith Olbermann for being political?

Or there was the case in Detroit where a reporter was sanctioned for wearing a political t-shirt on the job.

In 2007, when I was still a reporter at the Detroit Free Press, managers belatedly found that in 2004, I had contributed $500 to the Michigan Democratic Party.

Horrors! You would think I had accepted a bribe. You would think the Dems had hired me to sabotage freedom of the press.

In fact, I was trying to have some small influence on the outcome of a national election, which I had a perfect right to to.

Free Press editors — who themselves had contributed to a political action committee and illegally charged the expense to the newspaper — tried to set me up to be fired and forbade to contribute to politics again.

The Newspaper Guild fought the Free Press, and eventually, an arbitrator ordered Free Press bosses to rescind their obnoxious rule forbidding employees to take part in politics.

It is no longer politically correct to out people for having an unorthodox sexual persuasion.

But it  is okay in the mind of many media people to dump on people who have political views, especially when they express or act on them.

What is it about democracy, what is it about free speech, that journalists don’t get?

I’ve got news for NPR: If they were punishing an employee in Michigan, their behavior would be illegal.

Michigan’s Bullard-Plawecki Employee Right-to-Know Act forbids employers to snoop into workers’ political lives.

According to this law, it is illegal for employers to track employees’ political activities, and it is illegal to punish employees for having a political opinion.

Same goes for political activity: If an employee takes part in the political process as Simeone did, it is none of the boss’s business.

To punish an employee for taking part in politics would invite investigation and prosecution — of the employer.

J. Edgar Hoover, I’d like you to meet McCarthy Public Radio.

The two of you have lots in common.