Should Don Imus and his colleagues be fired?
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Virginia Tech/In Memoriam
"We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness ... We will prevail ..." -- Nikki Giovanni, University Distinguished Professor, poet, activist
5 comments:
I do not think that TV stations have an obligation to fire someone who expresses insenstive or unpopular views. Would an abolitionist have gotten much airtime in the 1850s?
The people with an obligation to drop the hammer on Imus are his listeners and his guests. We've already seen Orioles great Cal Ripken Jr. cancel an appearance on his show and hopefully others follow suit in terms of both appearing on his show and listening to it.
Imus's actions were unprofessional, his comments insensitive and their content bigoted, without question. But are the media and society supposed to police speech (and, by extension, thought) in a way that chills expression?
What's bad for reactionaries is equally bad for progressives. To limit the paramaters of discussion on a controversial issue is to narrow the marketplaces of ideas. If a trashy product enters that marketplace, let the consumers reject it.
Unfortunately, so far listeners have not fulfilled this obligation. Just yesterday, Imus beat out "American Morning" in the ratings. His network affiliates and corporate sponsors will continue to be purely profit-motivated in the great redundancy we term "corporate greed." Even the advertisers Imus has lost have conducted themselves under the thinnest guise of morality, their statements all speaking to "offending target audiences." As rating rise, righteousness will recede.
In the end, this incident will not play out unfavorably for Imus nor will it stimulate any meaningful discourse on race and gender. This just punishes the most egregious form of racism and sexism and allows more subversive and, I would argue, more dangerous manifestations to go unchecked. The press this incident has generated is fantastic for Imus. I have not heard his name this often in my entire life!
This is another scenario where a break with convention is merited. Since I am already punishing Imus by not listening to his show, I'll suggest an alternative: only black female callers and guests for the next year.
I fully support the First Amendment and the freedoms that it bestows upon the American people. However, there are occasions when this 'freedom of speech' becomes less of a privilege and more of an abuse.
Don Imus did not violate the First Amendment in a legal sense. However, Mr. Imus did violate the First Amendment in a moral sense. He used the public airwaves to insult and humiliate the Rutgers University women's basketball team. Not only was Imus' statement based on assumption and ignorance, but his comments were racist and sexist as well. No, calling an innocent group of college girls, "nappy headed ho's" is not libel, or a threat or even defamation but it is racist. Imus used hateful speech to describe the girls at Rutgers University. Unfortunately, the First Amendment protects hateful speech because it doesn't have a compelling interest. While the government was unable to punish Imus, the public as well as CBS and MSNBC was able to take action.
In my opinion, Imus deserved to be fired. The public gave him a fair trial and he was found guilty. He was guilty of a cruel joke that went way to far. Imus has a common track record of uttering racist and hateful speech on the air. He abuses this right to inform and voice his opinion to a mass audience. He has a responsibility to inform the public sphere not destroy the public sphere. Maybe, someday Imus will find himself working in radio. However, his opinions and actions will never be taken seriously again
I can’t decide whether or not Imus should have been fired. On the one hand, his words were protected by the First Amendment. On the other hand, listeners, guests, and sponsors are free to vote with their feet—and when the inflow of cash is cut off, CBS certainly has grounds to fire him.
It is true that this was an “egregious form of racism and sexism,” as Andrew points out; most expressions are a lot less direct. They are hidden in humor and masked in innuendo. Tackling such a complex societal ill can be daunting, and Imus offers a crystal clear example of the problem. With a problem that is so easy to “treat” (that is, Imus’s meeting with the team members and his apology served as his rehabilitation), it is no wonder that the media jumped all over this. Imus, we want to believe, embodies sexism and racism in our country, and making things right with the Rutgers girls is a step toward reconciliation, toward equality. As if it were that easy! I’m sure Imus regrets his words—not because they were hurtful and insensitive, but because they cost him his job.
A recent Gallup poll about this incident reveals some surprising statistics. Half of the people polled have a “very unfavorable" or "somewhat unfavorable" opinion of Imus—no shock there. What’s interesting is the other half: 20% have a "very favorable" or "somewhat favorable" opinion of him, and 29% have never heard of him or have no opinion . Either people understand that his words are part and parcel of the “shock jock” profession and pay him no mind, or they are not engaged in social politics. Either way, we have to recognize that with the Virginia Tech shootings and Gonzales on the stand, Imus’s blunder is yesterday’s news—for better or for worse.
I'm pretty split on the issue. Although I believe in freedom of speech and freedom of the press, I believe that a company has the authority to pull funding from someone if the company feels that what the person said or did could negatively affect them. On the other hand, when it comes to firing Imus completely denies him the right that is granted to other radio and T.V. personalities. There are plenty of other people out on radio or television that have said insulting things about other groups of people, yet still have their jobs.
If we are going to punish someone for insulting one group of people, it is only fair to go and punish the rest. The problem with that is, we have the freedom of speech, so in punishing a person because we do not like what he or she says, we're violating their First Amendment right.
And I am certainly, first and foremost, an advocate for a person's right to freedom of speech and choice.
The Don Imus affair seems to have little to do with the first amendment or fundamentally flawed morals and everything to do with CBS and the stickier side of journalism: business. It’s obvious when you consider that there is nothing different from what Imus said about the Rutgers women’s basketball team from what Howard Stern said on CBS for years on a daily basis.
Case in point: there was a time, a few years ago when Stern has some major beef with Steven Spielberg, and he reveled in making fun of the African-American child Spielberg and his wife had just adopted. In doing so, he would pretend that Spielberg was an evil plantation owner bossing his new slave around with the child responding with stereotypical slave slang.
There is simply nothing in what Imus said about that team that hasn’t already been said, in general, over the airwaves--it’s just never been said by someone with ratings as poor as Imus’s. It’s also never been said at a time when the media were as desperate for a good story. The women’s basketball team had a chance to become heroes—a huge Cinderella story—and they blew it. Someone who heard Imus’s comment decided it wasn’t too late for that to happen and ran with it—leaving Imus in the wrong at the right time.
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