Slashdot Mirror
CNN Fires Producer Over Personal Blog
dangerz writes "CNN has fired one of its producers because of his personal blog. Chez Paziena, the ex-producer, has stated that he started the blog 'mostly to pass the time, hone my writing skills, resurrect my voice a little, and keep my mind sharp following the [brain tumor] surgery.' After a few months, CNN found out about it and ended up letting him go because his 'name was "attached to some, uh, 'opinionated' blog posts" circulating around the internet.'"
Maybe CNN doesn't like the competition scattered independent bloggers are providing to its all-encompassing media empire, and are taking out their anger on one of their own who dared embrace new media?
After a few months, CNN found out about it and ended up letting him go because his 'name was "attached to some, uh, 'opinionated' blog posts" circulating around the internet.'
MORBO DOES NOT FEAR CNN. MORBO WILL BLOG WHATEVER HE LIKES!
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
No comments, otherwise my boss will find out that my name is attached to the opinionated news site Slashdot, and will be "forced" to let me go.
ya. this is a repost
I see storms of shit in shit-canning a guy recovering from brain surgery.
Not that that should be the focus, but it likely will be.
You blog, you jog, bro.
I can't get to the blog itself at the moment, presumably because the IT folk here have turned up websense to "paranoide" and "deusexmalcontent" can be scanned as having the word "sex" in it, so I can't evaluate the content--
What, exactly, did he post that was so damn controversial that CNN felt the need to let him go?
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
A young, white, white collar worker was fired? Because he did something to piss off his employers?
When will the madness stop??!
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Remember, this is the network that gives Nancy Grace a prime-time slot, proving they have the highest regard for journalistic professionalism.
PSEU. DO. NYM.
I'm sure that he well paid to stop the impending lawsuit....
Awwww yeah
CAPTCHA: alveoli
... in the Repressive Communist Regime(TM)[1] of Yugoslavia. Verbal delict anyone?
You may have freedom of speech, but it seems you are gradually losing freedom of opinion.
We've had our little wars and revolutions; when will you be coming along?
[1] Insert sarcasm tags where needed.
Ignore this signature. By order.
"they hammered home a single line in the CNN employee handbook which states that any writing done for a "non-CNN outlet" must be run through the network's standards and practices department. They asked if I had seen this decree. As a matter of fact I had... I had thought when I read the rule... that it was staggeringly vague and couldn't possibly apply to something as innocuous as a blog."
He violated a clear written policy. The guy is stupid for thinking work published on an internet blog doesn't count as writing.
I am curious why this article was tagged as "censorship"? Nothing was censored unless I missed something. Everything he posted on his blog from what I can see is still there. He was fired from his job, not censored. He has the right to say whatever he wants but he might want to consider the ramifications of what he says from now on. He doesn't have the "right" to work wherever he chooses. There certainly are places where he could work that would be fine with him saying the things he says. I might have gained a little respect for CNN actually.
How do we know this isn't the guy who's been making CNN cover britney instead of actual news huh? Cause I'm all for firing whoever that dude is.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
They didn't can him because of his myspace page.
This guy created a very professional blog that was getting widely linked.
This violated the employee handbook and he knew this for at least part of the time.
He may be correct that the terms were vague and it may not be fair, but this isn't some accountant getting fired for a facebook entry or him critizing CNN. CNN is a media outlet. This guy was creating another media outlet on his own. I can see CNN wanting to be aware of it. I can see them even seeing this as a conflict of interest.
Crying gestapo and censorship is pretty lame in this case.
Just about every mainstream media outlet, from national magazines to online-only news sites, require their writers and producers to seek permission, or outright ban, writing for other outlets. This guy broke a well-known rule and then plead ignorance. Waah.
Airplane Photos, Airline News, Planespotting Guides
for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the light he sheds on the way that MSM / corporate news works these days. Even though so many of us suspect that the facts of his story were true before reading his story, it is always nice to hear an insider confirm your suspicions.
At this point, we should all be thinking about how to coerce MSM to be actual factual news outlets again? Ideas, anyone?
It's obvious that having good ratings is better than being rated highly as a reliable news source. Perhaps (new Internet meme inbound) it is time for Anonymous to start informing advertisers of MSM that we don't like the shows associated with their products?
It would seem that only money talks these days. The real question is: Is it the advertisers dollars that talk loudest, or the politically generated dollars that talk loudest? Who really are the MSM's dollar dealers?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
This is exactly why I only ever post onto the Internet using names that are different from my legal/birth name.
Anyone could have their name attached to some random blog post, whether or not it was them who wrote it. Did he admit it was his blog when asked or was it "clean out your desk".?
First of all, I think CNN is totally off-the-wall on this one. However on the surface it does strike me as being awfully similar to a garbage man who works for a private waste management company, volunteering his time on saturdays on the Adopt-A-Highway program, cleaning up trash. This puts him in competition (especially if he does it for free) when the company wants a piece of the action in the form of a service contract from the municipality the freeway runs though.
Even if he isn't trying to do so, he's in a position to take readership from the company (weather it happens or not), and that is something they have a vested interest in stopping.
In this case, CNN would have been smarter (if this guy has the connections in the blogging community he claims he does) to keep him on the payroll as an independent blogger, with the rights to use his material on the show to further the perception that CNN is "down" with news bloggers. At the same time, give him some access to CNN's news-sources so he can break some stories that they "pass" upon on the broadcast show, and if he makes enough noise (or viewers) put it on the CNN pages/broadcast, and get the guy some screen time.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
He explicitly states that he did not blog about his job or CNN.
Glenn Beck and Nancy Grace are still employed.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
It was obvious he was growing quite a following...this news story will undoubtedly add to that following. He should slap a couple of google adsense boxes on his page, and make his blog full-time. He likely has the exposure necessary to do so...
Living With a Nerd
Doesn't matter anyway. CNN is irrelevant. TV is dead.
As opposed to the other kind?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I've only one thing to say.... I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
My legal name is Anonymous, you insensitive clod!
-- Mr. Coward
"Are there any respectable news sources left on US TV?"
Yes. You could watch Democracy Now with Amy Goodman on Link TV or Freespeech TV. They come in on satellite at least. I think the local cable company where I live has blocked them out.
Private company, private attitude, private decision.
The blog maybe right (information-wise), but it still can't stop people for doing something, right or wrong.
The media know that if they don't keep their reporters in line they will get screwed over. Instead of having their field staff embedded with frontline fighters to send back sexy footage they'll get embedded with the people washing trucks at the transport park. Instead of getting geed feedback from WHitehouse/Pentagon/whatever press officers they'll get delayed responses.
The media know they must keep their noses clean to stay in the game and that's why they'll repremand or fire anyone that looks like a loose cannon and will upset theri relationships with these organisations.
In the words of the Clash: "You have the right to free speach, unless you actually try it."
Engineering is the art of compromise.
This kinda happened a while ago, I'm a frequent reader of his blog. CNN Lost a great mind with this firing, but with his skills, i'm sure he has another job lined up, hell probably more. Still shame to see what CNN just did. I started watching MSNBC since this happened, and I suggest anyone who is disgusted with CNN to do the same!
under the zionist/jew-contolled media! WE NEED HITLER NOW!
We welcome our censoring, slave driven, overlords.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
His post regarding her and the people who watch her show is extremely inflammatory and derogatory. There's critisism and then there's just ranting in a disrespectful manner. His post was soundly the latter. Not really wise to post something like that under your own name where anyone can read it.
And then there was Bob Novak, about whom the less said the better. And I'm pretty sure there was somebody else who got caught taking money from people he was supposed to be providing disinterested commentary about, but the name escapes me. One thing's for sure. They have never had a military "expert" on regularly who said anything even mildly critical about the idiots at the Pentagon who seem to be doing such a good job of getting American soldiers unnecessarily killed and maimed.
It sounds to me like they dumped this guy because he actually seems to know what good journalism is about. On a network that was an unapologetic cheerleader for the Iraq invasion and regularly buries real news stories under an avalanche of shallow, horse-race-style political coverage and pixelized footage of some starlet's crotch, I guess this guy just wasn't a good fit.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/cnn-producer-says-he-was-fired-for-blogging/
Deus Ex Malcontent makes no effort to hide its author's strong views. "I wake up every morning baffled as to why America hasn't thrown George Bush and Dick Cheney in prison, Hollywood hasn't stopped trying to convince me that Sarah Jessica Parker is attractive, gullible soccer moms haven't realized that they share absolutely no kinship with Oprah, and Fox canceled 'Firefly,'" Mr. Pazienza wrote on the biographical section of his blog.
CNN fired him for being a shallow, stupid human being. He fits right in over at the Huffington Post.
CNN has a policy that they have to approve anything that is published by their employees. That's prior restraint, also known censorship. It's not illegal, it's not a violation of the first amendment, but it is the definition of censorship. Yes, the employees can choose to quit and then publish whatever they want, but at that point they are no longer employees. As long as they are employees, CNN's position is that they have the right to censor anything they publish.
Let's assume China has a policy of censoring whatever their citizens publish. Does that mean if a Chinese citizen is able to emigrate to Australia and publish whatever he wants, that China does not practice censorship?
You are correct that nothing was censored in this case, but the tag is appropriate, as CNN is asserting that their employees must submit to censorship if they want to stay employed.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
No, I wouldn't consider a blog with which they are making no money "published" in the ordinary sense of the word, any more than I would consider my posts to Slashdot as making me a "journalist" ...
In other words, it's about as clear as mud. Moreover, if you read it, it's not just because they had a blog, but because of what they wrote in it.
It couldn't be that he's a huge liberal that doesn't mind putting his foot in his mouth on a regular basis, could it? CNN and the rest of the main-stream media prefer mostly closet-liberals that attempt to create the appearance of objectivity. Chez and his blogs don't really give you that unbiased and objective feel.
While he may have wrote his blogs during his personal time, I'm betting as part of his employment terms he committed to keeping his personal opinions personal so as not to create a conflict of interest or the appearance of bias. Regardless, I find that his displaying of his personal opinions about the news is in direct conflict with his responsibilities to CNN and it's viewers. His opinions do nothing but undermine the purported trust and integrity of CNN. If his personal opinions are that important, he could have used a pseudonym or simply quit his job in favor of spreading his message. He really can't have it both ways (object by day, and "opinionated" by night). The public knows better and gets insulted by such shenanigans.
While I feel this was a good call on CNN's part, it is really too little too late. It really just underscores the type of people CNN attracts and employs which reflects in the news they produce. For those that follow politics and news, few should be surprised and more of this sort of thing should be expected. If they haven't already, it's time for all news organizations to review and update their ethics policies to address these situations.
I have read a lot of the comments here saying stuff akin to "Well he broke company policy so he deserved it" but that is not what he is arguing. In fact he doesn't care. The fact that he took his punishment and learned from it is a prime example of Civil Disobedience.
He elaborates in his well written blog post that the blogging community (which has only been around for maybe half a decade) is going to continue to grow on the internet and overtake the "major" news organizations. If you look at the road-to-entry for television and you compare it to blogging, you know this is true. You're not likely to ever create your own cable television channel but to setup a blog it takes little more then 10 minutes and it will automatically be indexed in search engines without you ever having to try.
The current major news outlets are only a combination of 5 stations. Blogs on the other hand are a combination of hundreds of thousands. Now that the entry fee into the media (all media) is little more then a browser with an internet connection.
This alone won't herald any kind of revolution. It will take decades for the internet to penetrate the masses the world over but if recent events with Wikileaks is any indication; the internet at least exposes the absolute truth. Unfortunately, for anyone that puts bread on the table with this industry; this might herald the end of the commercialization of news since keeping it free will be trivial.
...So I guess you're saying that CNN is more classy and un-biased than FoxNews? :P
Blar.
Employers do not work that way! Good night!
Forget the "policy" CNN had in place. The upshot is that he wrote or did something someone didn't like and they canned him. They could have warned him, or given him options, but they didn't. That's the telling part. Companies claim their people are valuable assets, but that's just crap. Companies view employees as liabilities to be tolerated only as long as necessary.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
When you work for a company you are paid for your services within a fixed time. Does that also mean that a company has the right (very grey area legally) to define what one says or does that is not related to the company in your own time ? My personal take is CNN have crossed the line and Chez should take them to task for infringing his constitutional right to "free speech" (does anyone actually respect free speech anymore).
I was just thinking about the meth heads in East Vancouver, those whom the various levels of well-meaning administration is desperately trying to sweep under the carpet for the duration of the 2010 winter games. We also have a very high residential property crime rate across the puddle. Gotta support the habit, you know. What do they get, maybe 10 cents on the dollar of the item when they fence it at the local pawn shop?
Reminds me I was reading about this lately. This guy writes really well, but if you enough of his blog, you'll figure out that he's totally into the "fear" business. First, here's a good example of his morbid fear-mongering:
http://www.providentsecurity.ca/blog/2006/04/does_an_800lb_s.html I told him a story about a home in Shaughnessy that was burglarized several years ago. Three men broke into the house and stole a huge safe from the master bedroom closet that weighed over 700lbs. The safe was not 'installed' and the men were able to get it out of the closet and down the upstairs hallway. Rather than carry the safe down the stairs, they simply pushed it down the curved marble staircase. No matter what you do, you're royally screwed and your marble is cracked if Provident is not on the job. However, he does write some good pieces. His main blog has some interesting crime maps, too.
http://www.providentsecurity.ca/blog/
http://www.providentsecurity.ca/blog/2006/04/a_typical_resid.html Once inside, the crook(s) will go straight to the master bedroom and empty out the bedside tables and dressers. The next stop is the closet where they will rifle through everything looking for cash, jewellery and anything that can be easily turned into cash. After the master bedroom, they'll typically do a quick tour of the entire house looking for other portable items like cameras before heading out to their waiting stolen car.
As most of the property crime in Vancouver is committed by drug addicts trying to support their habit, stolen goods are sold very quickly, often within an hour of the burglary. Most of the time, a crook gets about 10 cents on the dollar. As a result of these economics, a typical burglar needs to break into multiple homes every day to support their drug habit. What does this have to do with CNN firing a blogger?
I've always wondered who are the people who buy this "recently owned" merchandise from these corrupt brokers. Without that income stream, the whole system collapses. Apparently there is no limit to the number of people out there whose material needs place no boundaries on the recently owned. I hope they're the same people getting their windows busted.
I feel the same way about anyone who subscribes to a cable TV service. People, you are all enablers to CNN behaving as they do. Have your fill of the brain-sucking CNN horror show on your hot TV. You deserve it.
After that satisfying little burst of hostility, it suddenly occurred to me that this CNN story is the best argument in favour of a la carte cable TV service I've yet encountered.
CNN, however, disagrees: Why a la carte cable TV is a nutty idea
Nutty like a fox, if you ask me.
FTFB:>"I didn't make a dime doing it."
The man's obviously a commie. Can't have a guy like that working on CNN.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
The guy's name is Chez Pazienza, not Paziena.
:)
Perhaps Slashdot could employ a little professionalism themselves. Oh, who am I kidding!
Clearly many employees at CNN blog. Should CNN want to enforce the rules, they by all means can, but they must terminate all employees which can so easily be shown to be in equal violation. But no, they showed their hand when they pointed out that he was being terminated for a particular opinion. That won't pass muster. Employees can't be fired for their opinions on a variety of topics, including religion, race, gender, etc ... surely these op eds wade into a variety of protected speech regions. Once CNN targets speech, they're toast. CNN is in the business of free speech, if they deny their bread and butter to other's their credibility goes down the toilet. - and they lose a lawsuit, silly decision...
AIK
Ed Litvak
Read through some of the archived entries on his blog. Here's one:
http://www.deusexmalcontent.com/2006/08/things-to-do-in-texas-when-youre-dead.html
Not only does he blast Houston as Hell, but says that it is Hell mostly because it has Texans there. Ummm, I'm pretty sure that CNN cares about selling it's product in Texas. Even if it didn't and all CNN cared about was journalistic integrity, there's still a problem. Here we have one of CNN's producers publicly talking about the hugely biased opinions he was feeling while actively working on a story. I know we can't expect journalists to be robots, but it's easy to see how someone would read that and not believe in this guys impartiality. I know that most journalists state that the leave their opinions at the door when working. I guess I'm one of the people who find that kind of statement hard to believe and blog entries like this one seem to to belie it as well. He clearly didn't leave his opinions at the door.
Read through some of his other posts. He's a very good writer and many of his posts are thoughtful, insightful, and extremely entertaining, but they are also laced with very heavy liberal bias. Obviously, everyone is entitled to their opinions, but it's understandable why CNN would have a problem with one of their journalists being so open public about his extreme biases; biases that were, by his own words, part of his on the job experiences as well.
This is a news producer, given access at CNN's dime, blogging about it for his own use (and potentially collecting ad revenue too).
It wouldn't be considered acceptable in any other field. A programmer releasing code to things he was exposed to on the company's time, a record label employee running a celebrity gossip paper, they'd all be facing disciplinary action. Why is a news producer any different?
The guy was survived cancer surgery on his brain, and they fired him for blogging???
Damn...
They didn't just kick the puppy, they tossed it in the woodchipper.
[End Of Line]
This is a typical example of journalism vs opinion. Journalists are supposed to be neutral and report facts, and leave opinion out of it... draw a defined line between them, like. Oh, and since when did CNN get opinion out of their 'reporting'? I miss the fairness doctrine.
Any speech or action that has the potential to reduce shareholder value constitutes theft and will be punished accordingly. (Laugh now, while you can. It's just a matter of time before the "homeowner's association" concept expands into a "social stakeholder's association" and any action that impacts somebody else's property value becomes a lawsuit waiting to happen. At least the libertarians will finally feel free ;-) )
None of you people have ever worked at the higher level of any entity which bears health insurance costs, have you?
This guy had freaking brain tumor surgery!
Just think about what that must have cost, and how much all the follow up treatment must be costing the company.
Follow the money.
This is crap. It is dog crap: cynicism.
The guy has admitted he is prejudiced, and proven it beyond a shadow of doubt with his blog.
Bias can be corrected, but prejudice taints the news enterprise. Write the conclusion, then pick facts that back it up, and ignore the ones that don't. His alleged mind is made up.
Maybe, just maybe, his dismissal from CNN means they are actually trying to get the opinion out of their news stories.
They do have opinion shows, but I don't think "American Morning" is supposed to be one of them.
Liberal Bias, well I wake up every morning baffled as to why America hasn't deported George Bush and Dick Cheney may not necessarily be a exclusively liberal view point it is certainly biased.
Great Blog, and at least now he can go home every night and not spend his evenings in the shower scrubbing himself raw chanting Still not Clean, Still not Clean
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
PBS coverage is excellent. But it used to be that PBS was "viewer supported television", without advertising.
Now too many PBS shows begin with "was made possible by a grant from Exxon Mobil", or some such corporate giant.
They're definitely trying to influence the coverage. (Or does that make it sound like I'm wearing a tin-foil hat?)
Why would Canada want to invade the US? Definitely not for the resources, because there is a resource shortage. Definitely not for the culture because it's largely imported. Definitely not for the land because we have more than we'll ever need. Hollywood celebs? No all of our actors have already taken over that aspect of Hollywood (well the good ones at least).
Perhaps to impose our Socialist agenda? Well we don't have one anymore so that won't happen.
No, there is no real reason for Canada to invade. Sorry.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I didn't know that it was legal for a company to control the private lives of it's employees. I know it had been done, but to force someone to allow a company to control part of their private lives as a condition of work seems illegal.
Had the guy been someone who builds cruise missiles, rockets, and fighter jets, then yes, their is some legitimacy to the companies' need for that clause. But, he was a T.V. show producer, NOT a weapons engineer.
Occupations that don't deal with the levels of national security that weapons engineers do, should not be allowed to have such overly controlling employment clauses.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Wow... that brain tumour surgery must of cost CNN a ton of money. Well, I guess now that he has been fired, they don't need to worry about the future cost of his medical bills.
"but one of the fundamental American rights is the right to be an idiot."
I'm pretty sure that's the one right that W won't be trying to take from us any time soon.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
And their somewhat ignorant adherence to what someone else tells them the law is supposed to look like. Chez was fired precisely because of the blockheaded slavish unimaginative 'product' oriented apparachik mentality so prevalent in the /. set. Yup there's a rule.
Guess what - 'rules' are why your media are worthless shitpiles now. Good luck with that. Maybe you can 20 more years of Bush inspired spineless mediocrity....because those are the rules.
Did you mean "free peaches"?
The media has only one driving bias: making money. They write what people (buy, read, watch, tune-in). Anything else is a waste of time to them.
So forget about insightful, meaningful, important news stories (e.g., whether or not there were actually WMD's in Iraq during the run-up to the Iraq war), because they don't sell well.
But maybe I'm just a cynic.
Finally, a reasonable opinion on this. Not only did the guy have a personal blog where he discussed the news business, using inside information from his employment at CNN, as well as taking potshots at others in the news business, he was also blogging on The Huffington Post, which is a competitor to CNN's own website. It doesn't matter whether or not he got paid for the work--he was helping a competitor generate advertising revenue by providing content. I wonder whether a Firefox developer doing something to help the Microsoft Internet Explorer team along would ellicit the same defense from the Slashdot crowd. Or if a Barack Obama staffer (administrative--not involved in policy or strategy) was found to write a column on NewsMax saying why he or she felt Mike Huckabee should be the Republican nominee...
And even putting all of that aside, just as an employee can chose to quit a company because they disagree with the opinions of the company, its founders or its other officers, can an employer not fire an employee because they find his widely-expressed opinions distasteful? Does Ken Chenault have to respect "free speech rights" if he finds out an American Express employee has a column on Stormfront or enjoys marching in a KKK parades? The right of free speech is primarily a protection from the government, not from an employer. People may wish it were the latter as well, but that doesn't make it so.
"You used disinterested correctly! Ow my heart! Nadine, get my pills! Gaaack!"
$META_SIG_JOKE
As an American, I take exceptionally strong exception to this. The general chilling effect that employers have come to have on free speech in this country has become beyond intolerable. It's gotten to the point where, unless you're an independently wealthy heiress who posts sex videos of yourself, or some blue-blood entitled schmuck, that you're not free to express your opinions about anything without consigning yourself to the poor house. That means, effectively, 99% of the country that has to work for a living.
If you're a newscaster, at work, on the air, as a representative of CNN, and you come out with your own personal spin instead of just stating the reported facts, then yes, you should be fired. But Bill O'Reilly and Glen Beck do that on a daily basis and yet get away with it scot-free, so what are you really arguing here?
This guy blogged on his own private time, using his own private equipment, without representing his opinions as those of CNN. Therefore, it is absolutely and utterly protected by the Constitution of these United States. If we allow his employer to lay blanket claim to all his expression, then we effectively deprive him of his human rights.
So, for me and many others, what you have said here represents a despicable conflation of professional and private life, to the great detriment of the latter. If I could have any wish made on this President's Day past come true, it would be that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln would rise from the grave, pick your sorry butt up by the scruff of the neck, and kick it off our shores.
It shames me that you carry the same passport I do.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
It's trite but it sounds like you need it repeated.
Corporations deal with you according to your will. Any transaction a corporation has with anyone else is a free and fair one where the other person willingly enters into a transaction which he or she feels benefits him or her.
The government is not subject to such restrictions. Governments use the point of a gun to enforce their will. That's the reason the founding fathers specified restrictions on the government but not on private entities.
Mmmm.. Donuts
All truly good bad analogies involve cars and technology.
This is like a company hiring a car to work for it and the car providing free rides to people on its way to and from work.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Unfortunately when you're a traditional journalist, any public expression of opinion is about your job...
I feel bad for this gentleman for losing his day job, but, seriously, anybody who works in the mainstream media understands that your boss is quite likely to impose certain limitations on public expressions of your personal opinion. Therein lies the problem.
There is a such thing as "my personal views do NOT reflect the views of my company". Watch a DVD by Sony some time. They put up this disclaimer about the movie they're about to show.
We need to establish a Constitutional amendment that basically says that if disclaimers work for Sony and their movies, then they work for employees and their off-the-job opinions.
We need to nip this in the bud now. Instead of debating with people who think it's okay to fire someone for their off-the-job behavior, we need to start slapping employers with huge, crippling fines. Fines that can put even a large company into bankruptcy.
Fines that frighten CEOs and teach them that we as Americans will not ever tolerate corporations stifling democracy by threatening your job just for speaking out OFF the job.
What you do that is legal, off the job, should be off-limits to employers. Period. No exception. We must do this now or we will have everyone being afraid to speak out about stuff for fear of losing their jobs.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
The media know they must keep their noses clean to stay in the game and that's why they'll repremand or fire anyone that looks like a loose cannon and will upset theri relationships with these organisations.
Hey, I'd sign up for "Loose Cannon Monthly".
It's a shame the morons at CNN don't know how to play poker.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
"It's always been that way, or at least since I was a kid watching Sesame Street in the 70s."
Well, when I was a kid in the 60's, it wasn't that way.
SRR
No, there is no real reason for Canada to invade. Sorry.
In these matters, the answer is always, "Hockey and Molson".
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Media has a liberal bias in the sense that it assumes the only axis on which people can have opinions is the "raging neocon" to "bleeding-heart liberal", and of the two, the latter is the better option. I don't consider myself a Democrat or a Republican, but the media does seem incredibly biased. Both parties have some really good ideas, and some really bad ideas. It does not help the public debate in this country to continuously display only the good ideas from one side, and only the bad ideas from the other. 1) You completely missed the reference. It's from the Colbert Report. It's satirizing a meme that the media has a liberal bias, often-uttered on the "Fair-and-Balanced" Fox News Channel.
Meanwhile all 3 major cable news networks have grown far more conservative and far more accepting of whatever the White House says is the truth, without any further investigation, every day. Remember the media coverage of the Lewinsky scandal? Have you seen anything even approaching that kind of reporting antagonistic to this President, and the literally hundreds of laws that have been broken, or written off in signing statements?
2. We've gotten to hear the views of several Republican Presidential Candidates. Unfortunately, the only one running with views similar to the ones you expressed is Ron Paul. And we all know what happened to him.
Maybe to spread freedom? The freedom to download, the freedom to smoke pot... there must be others.
Could you bring some decent beer and some Tim Horton's coffee when you invade? Thanks!
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
It doesn't take a lot to realize the liberals are winning. The federal government is growing hugely, and not just getting bigger in the absolute sense (i.e., consuming more real dollars), or in the sense it is even keeping abreast with the productivity increases (i.e., getting larger but maintaining its percentage of GDP), the government is getting bigger and bigger as a percentage of GDP.
The liberals are winning. Even Ronald Reagan wasn't much of a conservative: social programs blossomed under his presidency. The only conservatives I can think of were Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton who actually shed federal responsibilities and gave them to the states.
Given that Medicare and Social Security expenditures are expected to exceed GDP growth over the next twenty years, already there is built in government growth beyond GDP growth, and that's even before such new great ideas as socialized medicine.
Hopefully they will leave us enough to eat.
Ed Barbar, President and General Manager, Furnit USA
I'm frankly baffeled as to how you criticized the personal opinions you quoted from his website when actual on air news casts from CNN verge very nearly on everything he said, or in a similarly extreme manner. Your opinion that the network had every right to fire him is completely true. They have every write to be idiots too, and he can be pissed that they are idiots. There isn't a thing I really like about CNN's standpoint here from an American cultural sense. They demand conformity, offer no security for conformists, and use fear and vagueness on their audience and cast alike. It's like taking asian focus on the society, blending with a distopian thought police, taking away the social safety net, and keeping only the American trait of being a bunch of self proclaimed jack asses. Being upset about this guy writing his personal opinions somewhere it is plainly not endorsed by CNN (otherwise, they'd be on CNN huh-ha) is just an area they have no fucking right to go. Don't give me a bullshit line about them being justified, they aren't because they haven't paid him to think exactly what they want him to think. This kind of shit is the sort we revolted against and we support revolts against. It's who we are. Again, they had the right, but as a consequence people have a right to look at their decision and say "Fuck off" for them being pricks in suits with a wad of cash up their ass. In summation, don't be a fucking tool and express pride in other tools. It's like the president saying something absolutely retarded and acting like he's the only one that makes sense.
As far as "Republicans want to protect the environment," the ones who say they do want to do so by removing the few remaining restrictions on corporate drilling, logging, etc--i.e. their definition of "protecting" means the very opposite of what it means to everyone else. They just changed their language.
As far as "democrats want to increase government spending even more," I'd have to ask, "even more than whom?" Which alternative? The last Democratic President balanced the budget, and reduced the size of the federal government. The Republicans always talk about how bad government is, but they have no problems with indefinite imprisonment without trial, waterboarding, warrantless wiretapping, and the largest deficit in national history. Republicans supported Bush in all of these, right down the line. So when your party actually has some prominent members who believe in small government, maybe you can wave the small-government flag again. As it was, Ron Paul got about 10% of the Republican polling numbers in his best showing. That's about the extent of the Republican committment to small government.
The reasonable Republicans don't speak up, so they don't get heard. O'Reilley and Coulter are the voices of your party--if you don't like that, stop buying their books and watching their shows. These people (and the rest like them) are the ones that polarized the political environment to make the population believe that only the far right is "really" Republican, while self-described "moderates" are Republicans In Name Only -- RINOs, as Rush named them. If you want to know why your party looks ridiculous, extremist, and sometimes outright stupid, look within. Even thinking that this perception is a conspiracy by the "liberal media" to make Republicans look bad is signature conservative thinking--the classic persecution fantasy combined with a pseudo-populist conspiracy theory. Don't think I just made this up--read Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style in American Politics, written in 1964.
While management can be stupid, only HR is truly evil.
I am so tired of people misrepresenting shit like this, you only devalue its original meaning.
Freedom of Speech is our guarantee that one day should we ever get off our collective asses we can bitch all we want about the government and they cannot do anything about it. Trouble is we are giving it away each year, now we can't bitch if we name a candidate who is incumbent within 30 days of an election... what next?
Your reply speaks volumes as to why this idiot was fired. Your freedom of speech does not trump your employers rights. Your freedom of speech is guaranteed versus the government, not some other entity. Freedom of speech means accepting responsibility for those words, including being shunned by former friends, hated more by people who oppose your view, or being told to take a hike by a news organization which cannot afford to show bias among its staff.
Learn to know your rights and you won't be so quick to lose them.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Of course Canada wants to invade!
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And express it outside of work, the dumb schmuck for forgot he was working for CCCP-NN
In CNN Russia, Blog writes you!
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
I don't think that is true at all. That means the "press" is consistently try to mold the public perception of the current administration, whoever that maybe. What if you totally agree with the currently administration? I don't think it is possible to do the "News" without betraying some of your leanings. No matter who you are from the Daily Show to NPR to Fox News there is always going to be a bias.
"If you like Battlestar Galactica, you're probably a huge nerd." -Stephen Colbert
If you would think about it for 5 minutes you'd see, plainly, that reality really is as I see it. All good, smart people agree with me. Those who don't are either stupid, deluded, too lazy to look at the world correctly, or some combination of the three. Some - especially the leaders/puppeteers of the stupid, deluded, and lazy - are evil, and while they may (some do, some don't) see the world mostly as it is (as I do, in case you've forgotten) they are actively deluding the public to amass power unto themselves. I don't, though. In fact, I merely accept the money and prestige that my wisdom gives me. It's not really my due, but I'll accept it.
You see, I am aware of the facts that really matter, and I am one of the few who see them correctly. I, not you, understand how truly important certain issues are, and I see to the heart of them all.
That's why reality seems to be biased in my favor: I'm the only one who truly sees it.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
What a whiney, sniveling little man... And its actually quite funny to see liberals attack each other.
Anyone keeping you from saying anything is censorship.
That doesn't mean they have violated your first ammendmant rights.
Just because you want them to be treated the same doesn't make them the same.
That graph seems like great evidence *for* the existence of "tax-and-spend liberals". Democrats tax and spend; republicans borrow and spend.
If you look at a graph of the US federal budget, it basically goes up, up, and up. (Democratic presidents increased spending, too.) The debt-versus-GDP graph has a negative slope for democrats because they got more of it out of us in taxes.
qwerty
At that moment I realized just how much I love America.
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