Tech writer iced for expressing opinion
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Posted: 29/03/2003 at 11:21 GMT
Much-loved computer columnist Henry Norr has been suspended by the Hearst
Corporation - owners of The San Francisco Chronicle - for
expressing political views on his day off.
Along with two thousand other citizens, including the former head of the
Pacific Stock Exchange, Norr was arrested in San Francisco last week as
he was protesting the US-British invasion of Iraq. He emailed the paper
to say he would be late the next day. But the cowardly Chronicle
insisted on calling creating a time card dispute, and Norr is currently
suspended without pay.
"This is a bogus, after-the-fact cover for an act of political
retaliation and an attempt to intimidate other employees," Norr
wrote in an email to Jim Romensko.
That his employer should take on the role of policing what employees do
in their own time is a remarkable act of corporate coercion.
Norr doesn't even do political reporting. "I write about things like
(e-mail) spam," he told Reuters.
Don't be so modest, Henry. His Monday tech column Tech 21 is a
rare beast: the former MacWeek editor completely eschews the kind
of gushing, techno-utopioan advertorials that are now
the norm for mainstream publications
in favor of a gentle and wise, and hugely-well-informed skepticism. He
also breaks stories. In other words,
he one of the paper's best assets.
But the punishment lasts for a "minimum" of two weeks.
Norr's shabby treatment highlights one of the absurdities of the US
media: it requires its staff to behave like eunuchs. This strange
hangover from the days of the Puritan ducking stool baffles visitors, but
keeps a mini-industry of "Journalism Schools" and ethics
committees busy.
Which is why, after the long editorial filleting process of removing
anything that might cause offense to anyone has been
completed, you end up with newspapers that don't have any news in them.
"Total objectivity is an illusion," Norr eloquently explained
yesterday. "Everybody has views on important issues, at least most
people do."
"Objectivity" - a word you only hear in the USA - isn't just an
illusion, it's a metaphysical impossibility. Although your tolerance for
"objectivity" is bound to be highly selective. Clear Channel
Communications - which dominates commercial radio in the USA - recently
sponsored pro-Invasion rallies and yesterday a Fox News Channel anchor
opened a news segment with the words "800 Iraqis ... and we
pasted them!" But you know that these voices are human, they may
be slanted, that owners exert influence, but hey - you're grown up
adults. Take your pick.
"The best journalism comes from people who are engaged in the world
around them," added Norr, who are not just blinkered scribes who sit
there at the keyboard and write stories, but people who have passions and
feelings and engagement."
The ducking stool treatment meted out to Norr by the Hearst Corporation,
which owns the Comical, has already rung alarm bells in the
Macintosh community, where where Norr is widely respected:-
"Punishing him at work for expressing a political view on what he
thought was his own time is a dangerous way to proceed in a
democracy," writes Applelinks' John Farr.
Yesterday, San Francisco citizens made their own
protest at their city paper's anodyne coverage of the Invasion
- no pictures of civilian casualties, but lots of light,
"color" pieces from embedded correspondents - by dumping fake
blood at the newspaper's offices.
Reporters without Borders, an international organization which tries to
measure coercion against the free press, ranks the USA
at17th in its estimation of press
freedom - behind Costa Rica. ®
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