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?
... 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.
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
Thats right, they aren't laws. He didn't go to jail, he got fired.
He is a producer for a media outlet. He decided to not give CNN the first option for publishing what he was writing. That is a huge no no.
The whole brain thing is pure BS to cloud a very clear violation of his relationship with his employer.
End of story.
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. . . .
He wasn't a journalist or a reporter, though. He was a producer who reportedly had no real input into the editorial decisions of the program. Would they have fired a camera operator for this? Secretary? The guy who fills the vending machine outside? You really have to draw the line somewhere.
As it stands, though, nobody in the outside world had any idea who this guy was until CNN fired him and told the whole world that he used to be the producer for this show. The very act of trying to cover it up turned them immediately into the bad guy from the view of most of the general public, and immediately cast what would otherwise have been a minor annoyance at best into a PR nightmare. There are no words for that sort of stupidity on the part of CNN's management. If I were in charge of CNN, I'd have the resignation of every single person who signed off on that decision on my desk already. The people responsible for sacking the responsible party have been sacked, and all that.
In my mind, this story just confirms what I've suspected for a while---that CNN is no longer going to even keep up appearances of being an objective news outlet. Anyone with left-leaning opinions need not apply. The whole network is really all about pandering to the Presidential administration in power. With Republicans in the White House, CNN's political coverage is only slightly to the left of Fox News. You can get more balanced reporting by reading Fark. It really saddens me to say that, as just a decade ago, I thought it would be a great place to work. Since then, though, I've watched it go downhill faster than a car with its brakes cut, and at this point, I basically never watch it anymore. That and the whole problem with TV news not paying well enough to attract enough people with the sense to ask the tough questions.... See my rant from a few days ago on that subject....
For those folks who agree with me, here's what you should do: tell everyone you know not to go to CNN's website on February 29th. Let's send a message to CNN that what they did is wrong. Go spread it on the blogosphere.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
My, what a witty saying. Did you come up with that yourself?
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.
Well, the premise is bullshit, so no wonder the output is no better. Even Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter are evidence of the liberal bias: the only conservatives we hear about are the raving nutcases.
How about good old-fashioned "less government is better" conservatives? How about "lowering government spending and federal debt"? After all you've seen in the past 10 years, why does anybody still believe that it's reasonable to think "bigger government is great, as long as my candidate is in the White House"?
Why do we see "democrats want to give everybody healthcare" and "republicans oppose science", but never "democrats want to increase government spending even more" or "republicans want to protect the environment"? Sure, there are people on both sides who disbelieve each of these, but strangely the democrats always end up looking good, and the republicans always end up looking bad.
Reasonable republicans are virtually ignored by the media, in favor of covering neo-con republicans (who are in power today) and their feckless democratic opponents.
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.
"In any case, after reading that blog post, I'm never, ever watching one second of CNN again.."
Say it with me now: never mix your real life with your internet life.
That's what this guy did, and he got fired for it and he'll probably never get a another news job unless it's for online news blog site. You can't go online and blog under your real name and be shocked when your bosses find out and may not like what you're writing about, especially when you're working for a big firm like CNN.
The idiot actually put on his blog that he's in the TV business, lists off all the places he's worked, that he has two emmys and a golden mic award, and that he lives in New York with his wife, and goes by "Chez", and on the link to his myspace he puts his age as 38. Gee, wouldn't take much to figure out who you are, and soon as the internet does and that you work for CNN every link to your page will read "CNN producer said this today". Think your boss would like that?
then he says:
"I'm an insufferable wise-ass who doesn't mind being an occasional nuisance to authority figures."
-- wow, I'm sure your bosses love that
"I wake up every morning baffled as to why America hasn't deported George Bush and Dick Cheney"
-- Sure CNN producer, bash the president, your bosses won't care.
--and I bet that's just the start, I'm sure if I bothered to read his blog their would be plenty of other BS opinions that CNN doesn't want to be associated with.
And he wonders why he doesn't have a job anymore??
I do not feel sorry for this guy and don't think anyone should, you can't be stupid and expect my sympathy. If he hasn't figured out how the world works at 38 he never will and if I was his wife I'd leave his stupid ass.
The only "job/school/etc fired me over blog/facebook/myspace" person I feel sorry for is this woman, who, at 25, was denied her college degree because she had a picture of herself in a pirate outfit drinking from a plastic cup and the title "drunken pirate" on her myspace page. If you can't have a picture of yourself taking a drink at 25 then when can you??
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
You argue that the Producer was being stupid for having a blog and that he should have realized the consequences. I disagree, I think this person probably did realize the consequences (he was in the news media after all), but may have under-estimated the banality of CNN executives and the more dubious nature of the Human Resource profession.
But; the idea behind the article is about what is fair and reasonable. I would argue that being fired for having a blog is not fair or reasonable, and in the end it merely damages CNN's reputation. For the average person that doesn't read Slashdot or doesn't read the referenced articles to Wikipedia entries (for example) then this will be a non-issue. So too, for the average person who watches CNN for their daily news fix; an employee's blog will hardly be relevant or noticeable unless it is specifically pointed out and made noticeable by CNN.
The dirty little secret of TV news is that producers are the reporters. The people called reporters on television -- the people you see on camera -- typically stand where they're told, don't do the actual interviews, and oftentimes don't even write their own copy. They're essentially actors.
I've worked with on air talent who are very involved in the process, and that includes a lot of the folks at CNN. But to say that producers aren't journalists or reporters is incorrect.