Greg Peppers, a 22-year veteran of National Public Radio, was one of two black men in newsroom management when he was escorted out of its Washington headquarters last week.
Greg Peppers Traces Firing to New Supervisor
Greg Peppers, who supervised National Public Radio’s newscast unit, says he was fired¬†a week ago after an "unwarranted and unjust probation" imposed by a supervisor who had been his boss for five months.
Peppers, 52, a 22-year veteran of the network, was one of two black men in newsroom management at NPR when he was escorted out of the building on Oct. 16.
It was less than 24 hours after NPR hosted the National Association of Black Journalists at its headquarters in Washington, and the same day that Walt Swanston turned in her resignation as director of diversity management, citing health reasons.
Peppers told Journal-isms this week he had been placed on a three-month probation by David Sweeney, managing editor of NPR News, who had assumed that job five months earlier. "The new managing editor said he didn’t like the way I was managing the newscast unit." Peppers said that in the 10 years he had led the unit, it had won the Peabody, a DuPont, and this year, the Murrow Award for breaking news from the Radio-Television News Directors Association.
Sweeney cited late arrivals to work by a woman Peppers supervised, he said.
NPR spokeswoman Anna Christopher told Journal-isms last week, "We don’t comment on [an] employee’s reasons for departure or any other personnel matters,"
It was Sweeney who announced Peppers’ departure in a note to the staff that gave no hint of the reasons.
"Our thanks to Greg for his many contributions to NPR over the years. We wish him the best in his future endeavors," the note said.
"Effective immediately, Dave Pignanelli will temporarily take over as manager of the unit. Dave will be closely working with Stu Seidel and me during this transition period. Over the coming weeks, Dick Meyer, Stu and I will begin the search for a new Newscast leader."
As a nonunion shop, NPR has greater latitude in letting employees go than other businesses might. Pepper said he was consulting a lawyer. As for employment, "I’m looking and out there networking," he said.
Peppers’ departure leaves Keith W. Jenkins, supervising senior producer for multimedia, as the sole African American man in NPR newsroom management. Jenkins joined NPR last year after taking a buyout from the Washington Post, where he was multimedia director.
Last year, NPR dismissed Doug Mitchell, an NPR employee of more than 20 years who has trained scores of young journalists of color to enter broadcasting. A number of African American men on-air, ranging from former hosts Tavis Smiley and Ed Gordon and reaching back to Sunni Khalid, the former Cairo bureau chief who in 1997 filed a $2 million discrimination suit against the network, have had issues with NPR over the years. Khalid and NPR reached a settlement in 2003.
Meanwhile, Vivian Schiller, who became NPR’s chairman and CEO 10 months ago, told the Washington Business Journal that ‘If we don’t have diversity in the newsroom, we don’t have the right minds working on how to best serve that audience,’ Tierney Plumb of the Business Journal reported on Wednesday. ‘What do I really know about the African American community as a white woman? So that’s a big area of focus.’
Christopher said after Swanston’s resignation that Schiller "has selected a diverse group of staff to join her and members of the executive team in developing strategic goals and action plans around diversity in recruitment and retention; our work environment; our programming/content; and our audience."