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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.
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.
... 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.
When will the madness stop??!
Once companies discovers they have to fire the vast majority of their employees because there just aren't as many cookiecutter droids as HR had hoped, and society collapses.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
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.
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
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
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
As opposed to the other kind?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
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).
(Disclaimer: I too was once a producer at CNN)
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. It was only a matter of time before something this guy wrote on his blog ticked off somebody enough that a critical resource would refuse to provide necessary information to CNN. If you think this is crazy, Linda Greenhouse, who covers the Supreme Court for the New York Times, has been under absolute siege just because of who she's married to: Eugene Fidell, an expert on military law who's filed a number of briefs relating to the Guantanamo detainees. Note that nobody has been screaming that Greenhouse is doing a bad job or presenting the facts about Guantanamo in a biased fashion; they're simply claiming that it's impossible for her to do so because she is married to somebody who's a player in that arena. (I should probably note both that Greenhouse is considered the best reporter covering the court, and that in 1989 she was publicly chastised by the NYT for participating in an abortion rights march).
So editors are generally pretty intolerant of reporters who mouth off in a public fashion. The idea is that it's hard enough to create a story that presents the positions of both sides fairly if you're already on the record as saying, for example, that you wish the President could run for a third term. Filtered through that gem, your otherwise fair representation of the positions of all sides might appear to be somewhat slanted.
I'm a little astounded that this fellow didn't adopt an online pseudonym...
"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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think you've made a pretty arbitrary analogy.
I think posting to Slashdot, even in the comments section, would be considered writing "for an outlet". You've written something and made it public.
And of course it's about *what* he wrote. People's opinions of him will reflect on the company he writes for for a living, since they may rightfully assume that his bias has had an influence on their content.
Honestly I think this discussion is going in the direction it is in because we have a generation of people becoming adults after being raised by parents who couldn't say no to them. People have seriously unreasonable expectations of what is owed to them by others. If you think that your last sentence should have influenced a reasonable person to your side in this argument, and not away from it, you're in for a rude awakening when you realize how the real world works.
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.
Oh horseshit - there is no greater disservice than people in the news pretending they don't have an opinion. What *that* leads to is crap like Fox News appropriating the laughable "fair and balanced" tagline and playing the "objective" news in a supposed sea of liberal bias.
I want to know the biases of media types up front - left, right, or corporate (and no, I do not necessarily equate corporate suckups with conservatives). I do not think that having an opinion and stating it has any bearing on news reporting except to suggest that true neutrality is damn near impossible.
In order to be objective (or as close to it as is possible), reporters and producers need to understand their own biases - more importantly, they need to know the kind of biases which emotionally affect or overwhelm them. In my experience, everyone has an issue or two that drives them completely batshit. Coming to terms with this, and being open about it, is the only hope we have - it is the only way we can have "faith" in (don't like the word) the professionalism of the journalist in question. What makes a quality journalist, in part, is what makes a quality judge - understanding that he is human and fallible, and working on ways to keep that out of his work.
Journalists are not holy men; they are fallible like anyone else. To the extent that the best among them keep biases they are cognizant of out of news stories, that serves the higher purpose of a quality press. But for us, the viewers, having access to blogs like this allow us to decide for ourselves not only whether the journalist is professional enough to keep his or her opinions out of her reporting, but whether there may be a subconscious at work that we should be wary of.
Lastly, CNN is tabloid news reporting. Any credibility it once had has steadily evaporated. Like its competitors, it leads with the stuff he mentions - Anna Nicole Smith, Britney's problems, and so forth. CNN is far more impressed with itself than is any member of the public *I've spoken to* who has actually been paying attention.
Sucking neocon cock, pandering to the dumbest among us - these are all biases I hold in equal contempt. I still think there is a place for professional journalism, and I think it may well rise again. I shudder to think of blogs replacing this (few bloggers, if any, have the time or money to do the kind of traveling, research, and so on, that is important enough to cover a story completely - the medium (the internet) doesn't, obviously, bother me).
These are the dark ages of journalism, indeed. Let's hope for a renaissance or enlightenment on the horizon. And most of all, I hope no one is stupid enough to be buy the sanctimoniousness of the corporate-run news oligarchy when they suggest (or allow the insinuation to go unchallenged) that this has something to do with a commitment to objectivity and unbiased news. What they don't like, is not having a leash on everyone who works for them, and that leash is necessary to ensure that the stockholders can keep controlling the flow of information.
Sorry for the long post, but the guy I am responding to is so profoundly *wrong*, I couldn't help myself.
And don't play like you can speak for the "public," either, you anonymous cockknocker.
You know 16yo camwhores from MySpace?
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
I remember Bernie Ward of CNN becoming furious at the suggestion that the media and reporters, specifically at CNN had a liberal bias. While I recognize that the accusation was merely part of the dishonest constant right-wing drumbeat and strategy that has driven our right-leaning media totally over the cliff, Ward's reaction was still very telling. He was furious at the suggestion that CNN reporters could be biased, denied the possibility of an bias. Wrong reaction. The proper reaction is to acknowledge that all people have a bias and that objectivity requires admitting and understanding that.
This space available.
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
The constitutional right you refer to doesn't exist. The whole text of the First Amendment: (from The Bill of Rights)
Note the first part: Congress shall make no law. That doesn't say anything about what private citizens may do; it just restricts the government. CNN is not compelled to keep paying this guy if they think it's no longer in their best interests to employ him. Whether that's a good idea or not is a different question, but one of the fundamental American rights is the right to be an idiot.
No, the idea is that you don't get the ratings boosting interview with the emperor if you're going around saying he's not wearing any clothes. Hence, everyone goes along with the charade pretending that nothing is out of the ordinary. It wouldn't matter if all that was at stake was the emperor's modesty but, given that it's human lives and human rights that are at stake, the results are more tragic than humorous.
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?
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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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