The Power That Was

NBC News president Steve Capus called for an extraordinary meeting of African-American employees on Tuesday, April 10. The gathering was in New York, but other staffers joined by conference call from Washington. Zucker had a policy that people should speak their minds, without fear of retribution. And that's what they did. According to people who attended the meeting but didn't want to be named discussing internal matters, weatherman Al Roker told Capus, "That could have been my daughter Imus was joking about." (Roker, lighthearted on television, surprised many with a scorching blog item against Imus, saying he was "tired of the diatribes, the 'humor' at others' expense, the cruelty that passes for 'funny'." Others piled on. "I'm telling you, Capus got lobbied hard, really hard, and he really took it to heart," says an NBC News senior producer. "We went out and created diversity in our newsrooms and we empowered employees to say what they think. And they're telling us. It's good for us and it's good for the country."

Imus himself was slow to understand how much trouble he was in. He apologized, admitted the remark was reprehensible, and began reaching out to the Rutgers team and to African-American leaders. But an attempt to make amends by appearing on the Rev. Al Sharpton's radio show turned sour when the two began jousting, a fight that spilled over into a heated exchange on the "Today" show. By Wednesday of last week, major advertisers were pulling out. MSNBC followed and CBS pulled the plug Thursday. (Before the show's demise, NEWSWEEK decided that its staffers would no longer appear on the program.)

For the first time in three decades, Imus is without a show. His wife, Deirdre, told NEWSWEEK that her husband will be back. "When he's in front of a microphone again, it will be about how to heal the issue of divisiveness and race. That is what's in his heart. No one else will conduct this conversation. No one else would talk about autism and Walter Reed. "

Throughout his long week, Imus asked that he be judged on his whole life's work. He talked of his support for Harold Ford Jr. in last year's Tennessee Senate race, and reminisced about broadcasting the sermons of Pentecostal Bishop G. E. Patterson. He apologized in person to the Rutgers team last week, not long after he found out he'd lost his job, and they accepted. He is optimistic—perhaps overly so, given the commercial pressures that brought him down—about the future. In an e-mail to NEWSWEEK, Imus said, "I could go to work tomorrow. Bigger deal. More money. TV simulcast ... I've got a summer of kids to cowboy with and then we'll see." He knows what he said was wrong, and that there is much to do. Asked whether his recovery from addiction had given him the strength to cope with the current crisis, he sounded like, well, Imus: "I'm a good and decent person who made a mistake in the context of comedy," he wrote in the e-mail. "My strength comes from not being full of sh-- and a coward." Perhaps, but there was nothing brave about the exchange that brought him low and reminded the establishment that it must always look hard at itself rather than look the other way.

With reporting from Johnnie L. Roberts, Richard Wolffe, Sarah Childress, Raina Kelley, Daren Briscoe, Allison Samuels, Eve Conant, Mark Hosenball and Eleanor Clift.

© 2007