Cliff Mass Famous firings

by umer | 3:08 AM in |

Cliff Mass Famous firings
Cliff Mass Famous firings - A popular Seattle/Tacoma weatherman has returned to the area’s airwaves on a public radio station after a competing pubradio outlet booted him for talking about more than just the weather.Starting Sept. 2, listeners can once again hear meteorologist Cliff Mass on the air when he starts a weekly five-minute segment on KPLU, the jazz and news station based in Tacoma. Mass has been off the air since May, when KUOW, the area’s other NPR member station, canceled his weekly gig on its midday news show, Weekday.
Before that, the University of Washington professor of atmospheric sciences had delivered weekend weather forecasts and discussed meteorology on Weekday for 15 years. Mass’s lengthy tenure ended, however, after he refused to promise Weekday’s staff that he would confine his comments to the weather.

Mass says his disagreements with KUOW started several years ago when he diverged from weather talk and began objecting to the math curriculum in Washington state schools. The station got complaints from people connected with the University of Washington’s school of education, according to Mass. The university also holds KUOW’s license. (KUOW declined to comment on Mass’s version of events.)
A Weekday producer asked Mass to limit his comments to the weather. He consented at the time but couldn’t hold his tongue when another educational issue came up in the news earlier this year. Mass’s comments about a Seattle Times article on the University of Washington’s admission policies, which he believed to be inaccurate, earned him another reprimand via email.

“I wrote back to say that while I was not looking to talk about other issues more than a few times a year, I could not agree to self-censorship and such restrictions were out of keeping with the nature of public radio,” Mass wrote in a May 24 column for The Stranger, Seattle’s alt-weekly.

After Mass made his position clear, Weekday host Steve Scher dismissed him. “We have been doing this a long time, and I know I feel a little long in the tooth. When it is time, it is time,” Scher wrote in a May 16 email. “We will leave it with different possibilities for the future and end our regular weather forecasts, freeing you up to do other things and us to feel comfortable with a segment designated as a weekend weather forecast.”

“Although we value Cliff’s opinion, I do not want the weather segment to become an opinion and views segment,” Scher said in a note to listeners posted on KUOW’s website.

Mass says he was singled out and subjected to standards that KUOW hasn’t applied to other guests, such as travel show host Rick Steves. The station airs Steves’ weekly show but has also featured him in separate interviews on station-produced shows, in which he has discussed his views on political issues such as legalizing marijuana. 

“Their travel guy can talk about marijuana legalization, but I can’t talk about the University of Washington?” Mass told Current. “There’s something wrong here.”

Those roles aren’t comparable, however, says Arvid Hokanson, KUOW’s assistant p.d. “Any time a producer asks someone to come on the air, the producer has something in mind,” he says. “Whatever the topic may be, that’s what the agreed-upon content will be.”

Mass’s dismissal prompted an impassioned response from his fans. Supporters created a Facebook page titled “Put Cliff Mass Back on KUOW,” which earned more than 2,300 “likes,” and an online petition calling for his reinstatement on KUOW gathered more than 5,000 signatures.

KUOW received a “fair amount of listener feedback,” Hokanson says, with some listeners supporting the station’s decision.

Mass’s fans have since turned to thanking KPLU since the station announced its new weather segment. KPLU contacted Mass the day after his departure from KUOW, he says. He also had offers from five other radio stations and a TV outlet.

Mass will be interviewed for five-minute segments each week by KPLU’s science reporter. This time, he’ll be paid for the appearances, and he says he’ll stick to the weather report. The KPLU arrangement is a “phenomenally better situation,” Mass says. Plus, he says, he’ll be available to KPLU reporters for interviews on other subjects.

Meanwhile on KUOW, the forecast calls for continuing weekly weather reports with no unsolicited opinions. The station has enlisted several meteorologists to deliver forecasts on a rotating basis for Weekday.