Published October 14, 2010
The Huffington Post made hay of NPR's directive.
The Huffington Post got a hold of an internal NPR memo (which we received at WBUR) forbidding employees from attending the upcoming Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert “Rally To Restore Sanity” and “March To Keep Fear Alive” events on Capitol Hill. And they ran with it — big.
In her memorandum, NPR’s Ellen Weiss, the senior vice president for news, excerpted NPR’s publicly available ethics code — with a personal annotation in italics:
NPR journalists may not participate in marches and rallies involving causes or issues that NPR covers, nor should they sign petitions or otherwise lend their name to such causes, or contribute money to them. This restriction applies to the upcoming John Stewart and Stephen Colbert rallies.
That last part is what got people so riled up. Of the nearly 8,000 comments on the Huffington Post story, commenter Todd Downing asked: “It’s unclear… did NPR also issue these types of warnings before the Beck rally?”
NPR’s Dana Rehm, the senior vice president for communications, responded in a blog post on NPR.org:
We didn’t get questions from staff about [Glenn Beck’s] Restoring Honor and One Nation rallies, because it was obvious to everyone that these were overtly political events. It’s different with the Colbert and Stewart rallies; they are ambiguous. But their rallies will be perceived as political by many, whatever we think. As such, they are off limits except for those covering the events.
So, are WBUR employees subject to this directive? Sam Fleming, our managing director for news and programming, says it’s a gray area. As an NPR member station, we take guidance from — but are not bound by — NPR’s ethics code.
I asked outright: Could a WBUR employee attend a Jon Stewart rally on personal time? Yes, he said — just as a WBUR employee could attend a Glenn Beck rally. Anyone can attend a rally out of curiosity, not necessarily allegiance to a person or cause.
Where WBUR draws the line is at involvement with political campaigns — either real or symbolic. That means no political bumper stickers, no lawn signs — and the rule applies to all WBUR employees, not just journalists.
If the most trusted name in fake news leads a march on Washington, is it comedy? Or is it politics? NPR says it’s not clear — so journalists may not attend as private citizens. WBUR, on the other hand, makes no such restriction.
Thanks to Adam Schweigert for the screen grab.