Why I Got Fired


From February 16 to August 8, 2004, I was employed as a producer for the current-affairs discussion programs "To The Point " and "Which Way, L.A.? ," produced by KCRW-PRI & KCRW, respectively. Then I got fired. Here is the complete text of the letter I sent to my former boss, Warren Olney, afterwards, which points out the numerous factual errors, logical inconsistencies, double standards, and internal contradictions in the reasons cited by him and Ruth Seymour, General Manager of the station, for firing me. I sent Ruth a similar letter soon after. Neither so much as acknowledged receipt. I don't think I'll be renewing my membership.

Dear Warren,

I don’t imagine, given what you know of my personality and the circumstances of my termination, that you believed you had heard the last of me. In any case, here I am again.

I hope that after I gave you almost 6 months of hard work—the first 6 months of my daughter’s life, which I can’t get back, and which I was largely absent for, including several days when my wife was in the hospital and I went to work—additionally spending 1-2 hours nearly every night, and several more at least one weekend day each week reading about current events so as to be the most informed person I could possibly be and provide your programs with that benefit, I hope you will now have the courtesy to give me a few minutes by reading this letter.

I enjoyed working on your shows, I was happy to be involved in intelligent dialogues on matters of substance, and the work suited me personally and intellectually. So it was impossible for me to just let this go without trying to better understand what went wrong. Over the last few weeks, as the shock, disappointment, shame and anger over my firing have slowly dissipated, I have spent much of my time soul-searching and investigating why I was fired. Given what you told me, and given how incongruent it seemed with my experience at KCRW and with my understanding of the employee-employer relationship, I knew that, in order to take something positive from this experience, I needed to figure out what exactly I had done wrong and what I could do to correct my mistakes and thereby improve my prospects of succeeding at my next job, assuming I can find an acceptable one in this profession with this blight on my resume. This letter is the fruit of that research.

The first thing I did was consult with two independent psychologists to find out what in my personality was the source of the “attitude problem” which both you and Ruth (she, necessarily, second- or third-hand, since she barely knows me) cited as a factor in my firing. But I couldn’t get to that part of the conversation before each said that any conversation that begins with the statement "I don't think I can save your job," as you said to me right after we sat down, could only result in my feeling flustered, panicked, defensive, and unable to present any worthwhile articulation of my thoughts, which is exactly how I felt. So this letter will also serve as my first chance to meaningfully articulate the reasons I believe I should not have been fired.

I’d like to go over the reasons that I recall you stating were why you were firing me, tell you what I’ve learned since, and respond to them individually.

Reason 1: The July 30 program was “the worst in the 12 years of the show,” or words to that effect.

The concept of the show I constructed had nothing wrong with it. It was to be about “The Manchurian Candidate” and conspiracy theories in the contemporary political scene, especially the Presidential election. It was to begin with a film critic to discuss the first movie, its removal from and reappearance on the market, and its themes of McCarthyism and Cold War tensions. Then there was to be an interview with the screenwriter, then a second film critic to talk about the current film. After the break, we were to go to a political commentator and an academic expert of conspiracy theories, both of whom Ruth, before learning about the problems that necessitated the re-feed, heard and said were very interesting. Sharon agreed, listening as the interviews were going on.

Unfortunately, the “chit-chat” preceding the actual interview between Diana and the screenwriter was mistakenly aired. After all of us freaking out for about 30 seconds, we told Cindi to pull the plug on it. There was about 6 seconds of dead air after that, due to my inability to tell Diana right away to start talking, because the Talk-Back button wasn’t working and her tendency (I believe Sharon and Christian would attest to it) to ignore the screen. The result, it having been pre-taped & there being a hard break coming up, was that we had to go back to the two film critics and go on for too long talking about the movie. When we came back from the break, we ran the interview with the screenwriter.

Ruth related to me that she was under the impression that the screenwriter was mortified by what had happened because he had a stutter and had said something in the “chit-chat” that was mistakenly aired about his having a stutter, and hoping we could edit out any instances of his stuttering. I have no recollection of his having said this, though it is certainly possible because I wasn’t really listening since I didn’t consider it my job to listen carefully to the chit-chat since it’s not supposed to go on the air and I had other things to do that morning. But here’s the really interesting thing: I spoke to Daniel Pyne, the screenwriter, and he has no recollection of his saying any such thing, either. The reason for that is that Dan Pyne does not have a stutter. So how Ruth leaped to the unmistakable conclusion that we had horribly embarrassed this guest by broadcasting the fact of his speech impediment, which does not, in fact, exist, is a mystery to me. Clearly she didn’t get that idea from him. After I called to apologize to him on August 9—believing that the poor chap had been humiliated, although it seemed odd that the publicity department of a major motion picture studio would provide a stutterer for a radio interview—he called me back last Monday. He said he was “mystified” as to why I would be calling, and had “no idea” that anything about the interview was worth apologizing for. When I explained to him what had happened, he was entirely nonplussed about the whole thing.

Certainly you know Ruth and her history better than I do, but I recall a quotation from an NPR official in the L.A. Times at the time of the Sandra Tsing Loh debacle, to the effect that Ruth has a reputation for jumping to mistaken conclusions. It appears this has happened again: Daniel Pyne does not have a stutter, and if he made any statement about hoping we could edit out stuttering, it was in jest. This he told me himself.

The next thing that led to the show being problematic was that the interview with Pyne ran too long. I would have axed it—we had other guests on the line & ready to go to—after 5 or 6 minutes, except that the talk-back button was not working; Diana was holding a sheet of paper in front of the screen so she could not see any written instructions to her to begin talking; and we’d already had more than enough dead air for that day, so I didn’t want to risk any more. Admittedly, the interview was too long, should not have been recorded that long, and should have been cut. But I felt it was better to have a boring interview than dead air.

Afterwards, Cindi said it was her fault for not cutting out the chit-chat before broadcast. When I wrote to you on August 1 taking responsibility for the bad show, I was taking the high road and trying to save her ass because, frankly, I was sufficiently confident in my status and never dreamed I would be fired over this, and thought that she might get in trouble. The reason I thought I’d be OK is that the most senior producer present, Sharon, with years and years more broadcasting experience than I, told me after the show "it's not a big deal," "don't worry about it," and "worse things happened when I was at the BBC all the time." Sharon also told me that at the BBC and Israel Radio, it is the responsibility of the engineer to “tag and tail” every interview. People at NPR tell me the same thing.

Also, emails from Ruth in the days following my firing contradict reasons I was given for my termination: I was told that ultimate responsibility for editing the segment was mine, yet Ruth nonetheless felt stated in an August 10 email to the technical directors, "You can edit at the critical times... (and) last-minute interviews etc. fall into this category." I was never told to edit chit-chat; it’s policy at other major radio networks for engineers to do it; and I think that a pre-taped interview that concludes at 10:25 am, on a day when we are short-staffed by half, might be considered a "critical time."

Also on August 10, Ruth told Mike, which he did in an email, to "re-emphasize the policy," aimed at "prevent(ing) ... the producers (from) relying on (the technical directors) to edit the material," that "all editing of TTP and WWLA is to be done by staff of those programs." Again, why was it necessary to inform staff of this if we were supposed to know it already, as I was told ex post facto? I doubt this policy was in writing anywhere prior to August 10, and I would like to see proof that it was. Certainly I was never provided with such a document (indeed, I never even got a job description, and was told to produce a segment on my first day—without having been told what it means to “produce a segment”), nor was I ever told as much verbally.

I was never told my responsibilities as producer for a pre-taped interview. For previous segments that used pre-taped interviews at which I was present, I never heard another producer instruct the technical director to edit out the "chit-chat" preceding the actual interview. So the fact that I was fired, in part, for not instructing the technical director to edit that out, is patently unfair. Everyone I’ve spoken to in journalism, academia, NGOs, and the corporate world, including top producers and presenters at well-regarded and highly-rated broadcasting programs, agrees with me that it’s absurd— “Kafka-esque” was used by one of these people, the administrative director of the largest medical research center in the country—to cite my failure to do something which I was never told to do as a reason for firing me.

I’d also like you to acknowledge that errors such as this are quite common in live broadcasting. Comments by a producer of CNN’s Democratic convention coverage were mistakenly aired on July 29. You told me “no one noticed” an editing mistake on a TV segment you once reported; I read about the CNN gaffe, which included an FCC-banned obscenity, in The Economist. Still, I doubt anyone got fired. And on my second-to-last day at KCRW, I noticed about 45 seconds of a correspondent standing dumbly before a camera on MSNBC. I don’t need to go on about this.

My last comment on the content of the show in question is that although it may have been the worst in 12 years—and I still maintain that this was almost entirely due to circumstances beyond my control, or for which I was not responsible, or for which I was not trained, and had nothing to do with the planned content and structure of the program, which were entirely sound and part of which was praised by Ruth—twice you told me that shows I’d produced or co-produced were “one of the best shows we’ve ever done.” Sharon once told me that in 6 months I’d produced many segments better than anything done by people who had been on your staff for 3 or 4 years.

Reason 2: I was supposed to inform management of the re-feed necessitated by the airing of the chit-chat. Ruth told me on August 9 this was “common sense.”

On the wall in Studio 4 is a sheet of paper with instructions of what to do in the event of a re-feed. “Tell management” is not on that sheet.

The most senior producer present, Sharon, did not think to instruct me to do so.

You sent an email, on Ruth's instruction if I recall correctly, to the entire TTP-WWLA staff, in the days following July 30, instructing us to fell management about any re-feeds. Why was this necessary if it is “common sense”? It is undeniable that all of this blatantly contradicts what I was told by Ruth.

3: Mistreatment of Diana & my “bad attitude” had fostered animosity towards me by the rest of the staff.

You called this “unforgivable.” Yet when I called Diana to apologize on August 9, she said she’d “have no problem” working with me again, and that she’d told you & Ruth the same thing. She expressed sorrow and surprise that I’d been fired. So, “unforgivable” by whom?

I don’t doubt that I may have been rude, brusque, obnoxious, or dismissive of Diana. I apologized to her and am entirely contrite about it. But you don’t fire someone for being a jerk; you tell him not to do it again, and if they do, then maybe you fire them. I was frustrated by her habit of ignoring the screen, rendering me incapable of communicating with her, which compounded her inexperience and lack of understanding of the standard practices of the program, but this is no reason for me to have taken out my frustrations on her.

No one ever told me, until your meeting with me on Thursday, August 5, that my behavior, attitude, or demeanor was felt unwelcome by anyone at KCRW. Indeed, after I wrote to apologize to the rest of the staff—still believing that there must be a legitimate reason that I’d been fired, yet unable to come up with one to that point, and thinking that this must be it—several members of your staff contacted me to tell me they never felt mistreated by me, and that while I may have demonstrated imperfect personal attributes, they never felt my presence was on the whole negative or that my personality made it impossible for me to work with, or could not have been favorably altered by me. In any case, to fire someone for a personality problem at the same time you are telling him of it for the first time is patently unfair.

4: I lack attention to detail, making you unconfident in having me as a producer, especially in your absence.

Most recent in your mind may be the August 5 Abu Ghraib show, which was not fully together by 8am the morning of airing. You had previously approved 2 other topics for me to produce on that day, which I had begun to put together, and I had only one day to do that show. The show-flow, in the end, was largely as I had planned it: an update on the various investigations, a discussion of the putative need for an independent investigation, and a debate about the usefulness and morality of torture in extreme circumstances.

In contrast to what I believe is in your mind an example of my poor production skills, I’d like you to recollect the July 22 show, on the 9/11 Commission Report. I produced all three segments in the chair, with 9 guests instead of the usual total of 6 or 7, and gathered and pre-interviewed 8 of the 9 guests myself. Then there was the Sudan show; the gun-immunity show (my first TTP); the Shi’ite factionalism show and the Yukos show, both of which proved to be prescient looks at issues that would play out in the front pages in the weeks and months following. I did some very good work for you, Warren, and all these segments demonstrated understanding of the issues at hand and sound news judgment, as well as an ability to construct narrative and drama into the show flow.

Also, I believe uniform standards of attention to detail have not been applied in my case with regard to others. I’d like to draw your attention to recent examples: For the July 26 “TTP Highlights” program (if I recall its title correctly) that aired at 6:30pm and was an abbreviated version of that day’s show, which I had produced, Karen and you instructed me to cut the TTP down to “half an hour” for the 6:30 show. I did so. Then I learned it was supposed to be 23:30. “’Which Way. L.A.?’ is always 23:30,” Karen told me later. Except it wasn’t called “Which Way. L.A.?,” it wasn’t at 7pm, and I’d been explicitly told “half an hour.” I don’t understand how anyone could reasonably be expected to glean 23:30 out of those instructions. The attention to detail you hold me accountable for would have led to my being told the precise time I was to edit down to.

Second example: on your Newsmaker segment last week about the Bush campaign lawyer resigning, you said that 527’s are called that because that’s the section of McCain-Feingold that regulates them. That is incorrect; it’s section 527 of the tax code. This fact is in an outline I wrote for you for a show I produced about campaign finance, and it was stated to you by a guest on a show.

Third example: Where was the Newsmaker on Thursday, August 26?

Fourth example: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in the studio when there’s been a factual error by another producer in one of your scripts or on the Sked & Cred. This happened to me exactly twice in all the segments I produced. You reprimanded me once, I drew your attention to it another time, and that was the last time it happened.

So, let’s review:
1: The July 30 show was a disaster that humiliated a guest.
There was nothing wrong with the show I planned. The problems happened due to technical malfunctions beyond my control; were not known to me to be my responsibility, which is borne out in emails from Ruth and Mike in the days following; and were not occurrences I was properly trained for. It’s a misunderstanding that the guest was in any was embarrassed.

2: I was supposed to inform management about the re-feed.
Never was I told that this is policy. The idea that it was “common sense” is contradicted by the fact that it didn’t occur to Sharon, either, and by your email, in the days following, instructing us to do so next time.

3: I mistreated Diana, and people on the staff had personal problems with me.
This is the only issue where I was entirely in the wrong (with respect to Diana) and, given the chance, would certainly have been reasonably expected, and able, to alter (WRT the rest of the staff, and future dealings with Diana and other guest hosts), but on its own—and this is the only legitimate gripe with my work, given everything else detailed herein—is not enough of a reason to fire someone. Instead, it’s something to be discussed and worked out. My frustration with Diana’s making it difficult if not impossible to communicate with her in the booth should not have been taken out on her. I’m utterly contrite about this and have worked it out with her. Diana forgave me, and had “no problem working with” me again. No one on the staff has a problem with me that they saw as severe or weren’t willing to work with me on, and even so, to fire someone without prior warning is extreme and unfair.

4: My lack of attention to detail is a fatal flaw & the programs can’t risk its consequences.
This standard is not uniformly applied, and the assertion is contradicted by the totality of the facts. I did lots of good work with very few mistakes, and am not the only person who erred in one or another aspect of producing. Even you are not immune to the odd factual error that you had been told about previously.

All of this leads one to the unmistakable fact, which everyone I’ve spoken with agrees with me on, and which is not incongruent with past treatment by Ruth of ex-KCRW employees, that it was wrong to fire me, from which I cannot escape the necessary logical progression that it is entirely reasonable that I ask for my job back, which I am now doing.

I can resume doing the best work I’m capable of—which, you have acknowledged, is often outstanding work—and, having been warned in the extreme, would be meticulous in the future about all aspects of my work. I’ve learned what about my behavior was wrong and am committed to not letting it happen again. I know I would let bygones be bygones insofar as working at KCRW again. And my knowledge and understanding of current events around the world would enable me to resume producing segments worthy of your programs.

It’s critical that I find work soon: Since my wife quit her job after my probation period was up, we are now out nearly $4,000 a month (after taxes) and there aren’t a lot of serious journalism jobs in Los Angeles, as you know. Subsequently, your & Ruth’s actions with regard to my employment status have completely thrown my life into disarray. We may have to move so I can find work and she can continue to care for our child.

Now that you have all the facts and a cogent articulation of my side of things, and must acknowledge what was unfair and unreasonable treatment of me, I’d like you to recognize, also, the difficulty you are going to have in improving the situation with regard to my former spot as producer, if you hire someone new. You said yourself it’s hard to find good people; are you sure you are going to be able to find someone with broadcast experience and my level of knowledge of world history and current events who will work for $60,000 a year (and crummy benefits, if I may be frank)? So you will likely find yourself back in the same position: with some hack off the volunteer pile who gets thrown into the mix, gets minimal training, and is expected to perform better than I did. Forgive me, but I’m dubious.

I’d appreciate it if you could discuss these matters with Ruth and explain to her her culpability in this process. I recall that one stated reason for offering Sandra Tsing Loh her job back was that new information came to light afterwards that mitigated the situation. I believe that I have demonstrated similarly here.

I’m available to start immediately, and I can be reached anytime at 310-xxx-xxxx.

Thanks for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,
Paul Tullis

Posted: Sun - January 2, 2005 at 03:25 PM        

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