Behind the Resignation of NPR News Executive Ellen Weiss

Like many, I was baffled by the strange circumstances surrounding the resignation of Ellen Weiss, a woman who had made her decades-long career at NPR, in the aftermath of the poorly-executed firing of Juan Williams. Paul Farhi has finally unraveled the mystery:

An internal investigation launched by NPR’s board in the wake of the Williams affair broadened into questions about Weiss’s command of the newsroom. While several employees acknowledged her role in building NPR into a radio-news powerhouse and emerging digital-news player, they also questioned her methods.

More than a dozen NPR employees, including some of its well-known hosts, aired long-standing grievances to investigators about Weiss’s management style, particularly the way she had carried out a series of layoffs and terminations in 2008. Weiss’s decision to fire Williams without benefit of a face-to-face meeting sounded familiar to those who recounted similar episodes, according to people who spoke with the investigating team.

More damning was the suggestion – hotly disputed by people close to Weiss – that Weiss had preempted her boss, Schiller, in telling Williams that he had to go.

Good Old Fashioned Detective Work

Mark Bowden’s “The Case of the Vanishing Blond” unfolds like a television police procedural, which is why it’s all the more impressive that it thrills you even in print form:

From the start, it was a bad case. A battered 21-year-old woman with long blond curls was discovered facedown in the weeds, naked, at the western edge of Miami, where the neat grid of outer suburbia butts up against the high grass and black mud of the Everglades. It was early on a winter morning in 2005. A local power-company worker was driving by the empty lots of an unbuilt cul-de-sac when he saw her.

And much to his surprise, she was alive. She was still unconscious when the police airlifted her to Jackson Memorial Hospital. When she woke up in its trauma center, she could remember little about what had happened to her, but her body told an ugly tale. She had been raped, badly beaten, and left for dead. There was severe head trauma; she had suffered brain-rattling blows. Semen was recovered from inside her. The bones around her right eye were shattered. She was terrified and confused. She bent English to her native Ukrainian grammar and syntax, dropping pronouns and inverting standard sentence structure, which made her hard to understand. And one of the first things she asked for on waking was her lawyer. That was unusual.

The Psychological Perils of Solitary Confinement

I had a chance to catch up on a ton of articles while I was on the plane to/from Sundance (see all /Film’s coverage of Sundance here), so some of my postings over the next week or two may be a bit older than usual.

In any case, here’s Atul Gawande’s examination of whether or not solitary confinement is torture. The short answer to that question: probably yes.

Craig Haney, a psychology professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, received rare permission to study a hundred randomly selected inmates at California’s Pelican Bay supermax, and noted a number of phenomena. First, after months or years of complete isolation, many prisoners “begin to lose the ability to initiate behavior of any kind—to organize their own lives around activity and purpose,” he writes. “Chronic apathy, lethargy, depression, and despair often result. . . . In extreme cases, prisoners may literally stop behaving,” becoming essentially catatonic.

Second, almost ninety per cent of these prisoners had difficulties with “irrational anger,” compared with just three per cent of the general population. Haney attributed this to the extreme restriction, the totality of control, and the extended absence of any opportunity for happiness or joy. Many prisoners in solitary become consumed with revenge fantasies.

There are solutions to this. Take the British approach, for example:

The approach starts with the simple observation that prisoners who are unmanageable in one setting often behave perfectly reasonably in another. This suggested that violence might, to a critical extent, be a function of the conditions of incarceration. The British noticed that problem prisoners were usually people for whom avoiding humiliation and saving face were fundamental and instinctive. When conditions maximized humiliation and confrontation, every interaction escalated into a trial of strength. Violence became a predictable consequence.

So the British decided to give their most dangerous prisoners more control, rather than less. They reduced isolation and offered them opportunities for work, education, and special programming to increase social ties and skills…The results have been impressive. The use of long-term isolation in England is now negligible. In all of England, there are now fewer prisoners in “extreme custody” than there are in the state of Maine. And the other countries of Europe have, with a similar focus on small units and violence prevention, achieved a similar outcome.

Of course, the U.S. would never allow such vast sweeping reforms. Our toxic political system paradoxically requires all politicians to be tough on criminals without actually examining the root causes of criminality and negative behavior in prisons. It’s a can’t-miss recipe to continue upon the horrible path we’re on.

Announcing the Chencast

Yesterday, as a mental exercise, I decided to see how long it would take me to buy a domain and set up a brand new podcast available for download in the iTunes music store. The answer? About 90 minutes (and 24 hours from the time I submitted it until the listing appeared in iTunes).

I record a ton of audio blogs with people who I find to be fascinating and articulate. I decided to try to make the best of them them available for download (by hosting them externally), and put them into a format that will be easier for people to consume (by making it available on iTunes). So, The Chencast is born!

This will not be a repository for ALL my audio blogs (which you can still find at my audioboo page). Rather, it will contain conversations at least 15 minutes in length, hopefully with an interesting person who has something interesting to say about something interesting that’s going on in the news, society, and/or culture. Being interesting is the critical factor here, if you can’t tell.

I have no idea what this will end up becoming, how frequent updates will be, or anything about the future of this enterprise. But I do know that the three episodes I’ve already uploaded are worth your time, if nothing else.

Whatever happens, hey, you should subscribe while the getting is good! I have a crappy website up right now, but where it’s really at is in iTunes. You can subscribe to the new podcast in iTunes by clicking here. Enjoy, and feel free to e-mail me to let you know what you think.

P.S. If you really hate iTunes, you can also subscribe to the show via RSS.

Adventures with Julian Assange

If you’re a journalism news junkie like me, you may find Bill Keller’s recounting of The New York Times’ interaction with Julian Assange to be a thrilling read:

The adventure that ensued over the next six months combined the cloak-and-dagger intrigue of handling a vast secret archive with the more mundane feat of sorting, searching and understanding a mountain of data. As if that were not complicated enough, the project also entailed a source who was elusive, manipulative and volatile (and ultimately openly hostile to The Times and The Guardian); an international cast of journalists; company lawyers committed to keeping us within the bounds of the law; and an array of government officials who sometimes seemed as if they couldn’t decide whether they wanted to engage us or arrest us. By the end of the year, the story of this wholesale security breach had outgrown the story of the actual contents of the secret documents and generated much breathless speculation that something — journalism, diplomacy, life as we know it — had profoundly changed forever.

The King’s Speech Was a Labor of Love

There’s this sentiment going around the internet that The King’s Speech is some kind of Oscar bait movie. And let me clarify that I think there’s a difference between “a movie that Oscars usually get awarded to” and “Oscar bait.” The latter implies some sort of cynical targeting, as though the film was written, directed, and/or produced specifically just to garner awards.

Devin Faraci’s response to this year’s Oscar nominations is characteristic of the tone:

The answer to who got nominated: The King’s Speech. I have not yet seen The King’s Speech, and I hear it’s very good. But I have stayed away from the film because it looks genetically engineered to take home Academy Awards, and it’s well on its way – the film received 12 nominations, making it the front runner at this year’s Oscars. So now I’ll trudge down the street to catch the film at my local theater, where it’s been playing for weeks, and I’m sure I’ll enjoy it well enough. I’ll just never forget that this thing is like the shark of the movie world: it exists only to consume. Awards, in this case.

Reading something like this, it’s easy to suspect that The King’s Speech’s awards success was assured from the outset. I don’t think this is the case. Rather, listening to director Tom Hooper tell the story, it’s clear that creating the film was a labor of love, and that without some creative, elaborate patchwork of financing deals, the film (whose screenplay, by the way, was originally supposed to be a play) never would have come together.

Here’s KCRW’s interview with Hooper. Hooper’s segment begins about 8 minutes in.

I Am Going To Sundance 2011

Hey all,

By this point, I think there are at least a few dozen of you reading this thing regularly. To y’all, I say: Thanks! FYI: I’ll be heading to Sundance starting on Thursday, January 20, so updates will be basically nonexistent until I return next week (January 25th). However, do check out /Film, as there will be tons of content in the form film reviews, photographs, interviews, video blogs, and most importantly, AUDIOBOOS!

Sincerely,
David

In Which /Film Disappoints Roger Ebert

A couple of years ago, I wrote a lengthy reflection asking readers of /Film why they read “Top 10” lists at the end of each year. Here’s what I wrote back then:

We read these lists because we have strong feelings about films and as social creatures, we like to see our opinions validated. When allegedly respectable people disagree with us, we label their views as inferior. We express mock outrage because it’s fun to rip apart a writer on a message board or comments section. But ultimately, I think all of that misses the point. Lists, reviews, even news items: We should all read these things to be informed, not only about objective reality but also about subjective opinions. How else can our own opinions be refined and improved except in the presence of those that are opposed to ours? As the old adage goes, “Variety is the spice of life.” How boring, monotonous, and oppressive would it be if everyone just had the same opinion on every single film out there?

I still agree with this sentiment completely. Perhaps when I was younger and more foolish, I read lists to make sure that critics agreed with my own picks. But these days, I celebrate the fact that people have different choices. Maybe they’ll give me an idea for a movie to check out on the festival circuit, or maybe I’ll have more fodder to add to my ever-lengthening Netflix queue. Whatever the case, diversity in film opinion should be celebrated, not quashed. And when someone picks a film that you hate on their “Top 10” list, that should be more motivation to read their reasoning. Considering opposing opinions sharpens the mind, rather than dulling it.

I thought about that piece recently when I learned that legendary film critic Roger Ebert had commented on an article over at /Film. Ebert set the film blogosphere on fire when he tapped 24-year old writer/blogger Ignatiy Vishnevetsky to appear in his new At The Movies television show. Scrutiny of Vishnevetsky escalated shortly thereafter, a phenomenon exemplified by the comments in our piece listing his Indiewire ballot best films of 2010. Vishnevetsky’s choices were certainly unorthodox, but as I’ve already tried to explain, one’s justifications, reasoning, and criticism are more important than some arbitrary numerical ranking of favorite films.

Here’s what Ebert had to say about Vishnevetsky’s list:

I think it’s a good list. “World on a Wire” is a rediscovered Fassbinder. “The Father of my Children,” “Vincere” and “White Material” are on my Best Foreign Films List. I gave “Vengeance” 3.5 stars. Loved Jane Birkin in “Around a Small Mountain.” Didn’t see “Eccentricities,” but it was good enough for the official selection at Cannes. Do these posters know who its director is? I wager not.

The Romero I didn’t see. Every critic is allowed one weirdo title out of 10. It’s a tradition. All depends on *what he said about it.*

Bear in mind Ignatiy wasn’t seeing all the mainstream movies last year. Not his job. He went voluntarily to movies he wanted to see. This list suggests the extent of his knowledge and curiosity.

Some of these Slashfilm readers disappoint me. They criticize this list for (1) not rubber-stamping other lists, and (2) for, gasp, including films they haven’t seen! Typical of that conformist group I call the List Police.

I read the list and rejoiced that we had Ignatiy on the show.

Roger Ebert

Some of them disappoint me too, Roger. Some of them disappoint me too.

I’m obviously crestfallen that commenters displaying the intellect, manners, and capacity of middle schoolers are allowed to hijack such a conversation on our site (and that, on one of the few days of the year that Ebert ventures over to visit us, that’s what he has to see). But there are several factors that counteract my desire to throw my hands up in the air and just give up hope. Because, you see, I know that there are great deal of intelligent people reading our site, people who’ve written me e-mails containing thoughtful, lengthy discourses on the nature of John Woo’s violence, and on the merits of Martin Scorsese, and on the prevalence of chauvinism or masochism or hedonism in this film or that film. Their encouragement has been immeasurable to me.

I also know that we, as writers, can only do our best. And while some of the readers we are attracting may not leave the most respectful comments, we can all aspire to be better than we would otherwise be. It’s also possible, too, that one day our commenters will grow up and realize that there’s a great, big, beautiful world out there, full of people who hold different opinions than they do. Hopefully, we’ll reach that day soon.

[P.S. Mr. Ebert: If you ever get around to reading this, you should really check out The Tobolowsky Files. I think it’d be right up your alley.]