Everyone gets to step in it once in a while. William Arkin did yesterday, and complicated things today by steeping in deeper. Is this a characteristic of journalists, or what?
I have one small thing to add to Joe's post below.
Vehement disagreement =! silencing.
Here's Arkin from today's post:
The Arrogant and Intolerant Speak OutWell, one thing's abundantly clear about who will actually defend our rights to say what we believe: It isn't the hundreds who have written me saying they are soldiers or veterans or war supporters or real Americans -- who also advise me to move to another country, to get f@##d, or to die a painful, violent death.
The problem of course is that if you wade through the comments (and read the blog posts) the sentiments cited above are a fraction of the abuse heaped on Arkin's deserving pate. Most of the comments essentially call him an idiot.
As I commented on Mr. Arkin's blog post:
Mr. Arkin, you have every right to say what you believe, and with rare exceptions, I haven't seen anyone suggest that you don't.You also have the right to have those who read your opinions and think they are arrogant, contemptuous, and foolish respond. And they are...
It's the height of self-delusion to suggest that public disagreement with you is the same as demanding that you're silenced. I think it's great to see you speak up, and great to see people respond. That's freedom.
Mr. Arkin told two bald-faced lies in the third paragraph of his follow-up piece. If the WA Post had any integrity, they would fire him for that and then apologize to all of us for hiring him in the first place.
I don't think Arkin stepped in anything. He did this deliberately, opening the door for others to make even more vile attacks.
Neither of these columns is unexpected from him, given his past.
Another nice but important distinction (maybe agreeing with Charles, maybe not):
"If I was Arkin's boss, I'd fire him for this" =! "WaPo should fire Arkin."
I certainly wouldn't employ someone with Mr. Arkin's opinions as my in-house military expert, any more than I'd hire Morgan Spurlock to cover the food and hospitality industry beat. But the Washington Post is free to employ such a person and suffer or enjoy the consequences in the market.
If I were a Washington Post advertiser, I might pull my ads over this... but I don't think I would try to force such action by boycotting their advertisers.
Because ?????
Fair question, Robin. I'm making an analogy from Vroom's expectancy theory of motivation. Trying to punish Arkin by punishing his employer by punishing its advertisers via boycott doesn't seem very productive, because the link between their advertising and Arkin's post is very tenuous. The ratio of actual punishment inflicted to effort expended is low. But advertisers themselves can make the link between punishment and objectionable content much tighter and more immediate.
As an advertiser, I wouldn't make any arguments from what the Post should do. I just "don't want my brand associated with statements XYZ." As I said, I don't really think that the Post has some sort of moral obligation now to fire Arkin; the Post can employ whomever it pleases and publish whatever it pleases. A boycott would probably entail demands of some sort which I ultimately can't defend very strongly.
I'm sure this could be better articulated but I'd need to think through it some more. Here's some stuff on Vroom and his theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Vroom. Basically Vroom says that motivation depends not only on ability to accomplish the desired outcome but perceived probability that success will in fact lead to reward (linkage). Wikipedia calls this "instrumentality."