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.'"

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Three words

[boxlight]

PSEU. DO. NYM.

You know, there was a name for this...

[cp.tar]

... 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.

Re:The dude violated a policy he admitted he read.

[johansch]

So if your employer wrote down in a policy that employees were not allowed to breathe, and you then read that policy, and also presumably violated, that would be fair grounds for dismissal?

"Policies" are not laws.

this guy's story is pretty interesting actually

[zappepcs]

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?

Competition?

[Ohio Calvinist]

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.

sex sells

[esocid]

With the exception of the period immediately following 9/11, which saw the best characteristics of television journalism shocked back into focus and the passion of even the most jaded and cynical of its practitioners return like a shot of adrenaline to the heart, the profession I once loved and felt honored to be a part of has lost its way.

That's pretty much how I feel about journalism these days. I'm not sure what brought it about, whether it is who owns the mass media or government, but no longer are there worthwhile reports about what is important. It's about what sells. The days of muckracking seem to be over (for the mass media, wikileaks comes to mind most currently as non-mass media) and it is more about this celebrity did this or propaganda sent down the channels, and shy away from stories that really expose stories with an unbiased presentation.

I was asked to complete self-evaluations which pressed me to describe the ways in which I'd "increased shareholder value." (For the record, if you're a rank-and-file member of a newsroom, you should never under any circumstances even hear the word "shareholders," let alone be reminded that you're beholden to them.) I watched the media in general do anything within reason to scare the hell out of the American public -- to convince people that they were about to be infected by the bird flu, poisoned by the food supply, or eaten by sharks.

To think that someone who works in the business of providing an unbiased view of what exactly is occurring in the world should in no way have any connection to whether or not their employer makes money off of it. This goes back to making money. If I had watched CNN before now I would stop, but I guess since I never do it's moot.

Re:They don't like competition

[Midnight Thunder]

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?

Are there any respectable news sources left on US TV? If it wasn't for the internet I would have been left believing that we are surrounded by terrorists and that our northern neighbour is hell bent on invading us. Heck, at what point did our news channels become 'based on a true event', instead of being 'about a real event'.

Re:The dude violated a policy he admitted he read.

[RockClimbingFool]

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.

Re:The dude violated a policy he admitted he read.

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Hear, hear

He also admits that he was posting under his real name, and, while he denies this is the case, anyone reading his blog would assume he had a liberal bias. Well, I'm all in favor of the news outlets avoiding even the appearance of inpropriety (politicians too). The fact that they rarely do doesn't change the fact that news outlets shouldn't let partisan loyalists be producers/commentators, and people setting the standards for voting shouldn't head a candidate's election committee. Even if they are imparital, there are other impartial people who appear to be so. There are enough other people who can do this guys job.

"I said that they can't possibly expect CNN employees, en masse, to not engage in something as popular and timely as blogging if they don't make themselves perfectly clear." Boo-fucking-hoo. He read the line quoted in the parent, and that's clear to me. Now, if he had not seen that line in the handbook, that would be one thing. But he knew what he was doing. He didn't like his job and didn't care if he lost (if you read the article.)

Re:Filtered by websense

[milsoRgen]

What, exactly, did he post that was so damn controversial that CNN felt the need to let him go?

I'm not entirely sure, but he see does seem critical of the mainstream press in general. Some stuff on the election [deusexmalcontent.com] (with the title "Is Barack Obama Gonna Have to Choke A Bitch") and entertainment figures [deusexmalcontent.com]. The use of Tigger [deusexmalcontent.com] in an adult themed context seems to be the riskiest thing thus far. Still seems pretty tame by most standards, but considering his name was tied to it and he was an employee of CNN I can see how they would be wary being connected to it. Really, we've given business so much leeway in their hiring and firing practices that I fail to see the relevance to all this, aside from the fact he has a bigger soapbox than most to stand on. In fact in his write up of the issue, he mentions the fact that the employee handbook states you must okay any outside work through standards and practices, and he was aware of that a full month before. So really, nothing to see here.

Re:Three words

[Midnight Thunder]

If you have to hide your identity to say what you want, the terrorists have won.

Are you accusing CNN of being terrorists? Hmm.

Oprah Post

[StevisF]

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.

Re:Published?

[ivan256]

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.

Excuses, excuses...

[fahrbot-bot]

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.

Re:NOT his job

[dgatwood]

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.

• If they had fired a journalist or other person whose job is writing, that would be a very different story, as that would be doing something closely related to your job responsibilities, and the content could thus be technically owned by your employer. Restrictions on outside publishing would then be legally justifiable.
• If they had fired a reporter for doing this, then the person's face on the blog would tie it back to CNN and there would be legitimate cause for concern.
• If this guy had talked about working for CNN and blogged about his job responsibilities, there would be a strong tie again.

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.

Re:Democracy Now!

[daveywest]

Doubt it. I worked for a small (22k circulation) daily paper in editorial and later production. We did a lot of contract printing for small rags, and we'd mock them when they would put an ad on their front page for selling out.

All hell broke loose the day the sales dept. said we were putting a "banner" across the bottom of our flagship daily.

Of course, that was right after we were told we couldn't report automotive recalls anymore because a used car dealer threatened to pull his advertising for reporting that "used cars might be unsafe." I personally got written warnings for using the word "poaching" when a city councilman was arrested by fish & game with a shotgun and a dead deer carcass out of season. What ever happened to calling a duck a duck?

Re:Missing the Point

[popejeremy]

Oh for God's sake. Every time somebody breaks a rule, somebody else wants to say that it's Civil Disobedience. This is not Civil Disobedience.

Civil Disobedience is when a party breaks a law knowingly, and advises the authorities about the rule breaking ahead of time in an effort to draw attention to the existence of a bad law.

This guy didn't break a law. He broke his company's rules. He didn't advise them about it ahead of time. He wasn't trying to highlight a bad rule. All he did was break a rule and get caught.

This is a softball

[AmericanInKiev]

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

Re:Democracy Now!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Democracy Now!

[FSWKU]

But let's just see where you turn next time you want an update on Paris Hilton's brother's DUI, Britney Spears's sister's pregnancy, Britney's zany exploits and custody issues, or Lindsay Lohan's latest wreck (car or box-office - your pick)?

Easy, Fox News. Seriously, that's EXACTLY the kind of trivial bullshit making front page headlines (on there AND on CNN) that made me switch to BBC America.

Re:NOT his job

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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.

Re:Democracy Now!

[mattmarlowe]

TV hasn't really had a respectable moderate/independent American news show since the late 90's.

I think FOX started it by going way right, and then CNN decided to counter by going left.

PBS tried to stay in the center, and they still do a bunch of stuff well, but they've been tilting slightly leftward the last few years - not so much in the content of their articles as much as the selection of what to cover.

The BBC also used to be the gold standard for neutrality, but after the various scandals relating to their reporters coverage - I stopped watching. I don't think I'll start again -- BBC is naturally going to have a somewhat "europe" centered view of news, and I think USA and Europe are heading in opposite directions/perspectives.

Charlie Rose and C-SPAN are still good wonderful places to get unbiased direct reporting. More and more, this is where my tv dial is tuned. But, neither c-span or charlie rose try to cover more than a small percent of what is going on in the world.

Strangely enough, as someone who has regularly read the new york times, washington post, la times, etc the last 15 years....the only somewhat neutral comprehensive coverage of whats going on seems to be in the wall street journal print edition. I guess while business people may be
more conservative in general than the populace, they still are willing to pay a premium to know really is going on, and the perspectives of all sides.

Hoist by his own petard

[toddhisattva]

the job of the press is to maintain an adversarial relationship with the government at all times

-the moron we're talking about

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.

Re:Democracy Now!

[joggle]

The BBC isn't immune to trivial BS either. Just the other night they spent at least 10 minutes on this nutjob that is still claiming a massive conspiracy in Princess Diana's death (claiming it was an assasination) with absolutely no proof to back himself up. I'd rather see a story about a cat saving a squirrel than more tripe like that.

Re:Democracy Now!

[iamhassi]

"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 [mtv.com], 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??

Re:Democracy Now!

[unlametheweak]

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.

Re:NOT his job

[gruntled]

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.

Re:Democracy Now!

[Blue Stone]

>There is such a thing as free speech, and americans, including this guy, expect it.

You forgot the corporate route-around the constitution - it doesn't matter if the constitution says this or that, if the people with the power to grant, or take away, your livelihood don't have to abide by it.

It's the same in the EU - people with power - corporations (et al,) aren't restricted by the (pitiful and inefective, but let's not get into that) restrictions of the constitutions/rights charters, etc. Only the government is (ok ... supposedly ... like I said, let's not get into that). As far as Corporations exist, with their power over people, and do so outside ... let me charecterise it as - reasonable restraints - then this sit will continue to happen and we will be not so much under a dictatorship as under a defacto dictatorship.

Governments could say - corportations shouldn't wield this sort of power - this sort of discrimination - and it would be stopped, but people need to tell their governments that they need to curb corporate power first.

Spread freedom?

[Mal-2]

Why would Canada want to invade the US?

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

try taking back your party

[misanthrope101]

The "less government is better" conservatives have been marginalized in your party. The Neocons (who are not conservatives, but visionary crusaders bent on saving the world) have taken over your party. So if we (i.e. everyone else) are going to criticize Republicans, we are going to criticize the Neocons. If you don't like being associated with them, push them out of positions of power in your party.

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 [uri.edu], written in 1964.

Re:Democracy Now!

[thebdj]

Damn, ya got me there.... My mailman is a "reasonable republican", and he has no power whatsoever, but DAMNIT it is Liberal Bias when the Media doesn't give him Equal TV Coverage.

Oh yes, because every republican in the federal politics right now is some far-right leaning, borderline fascist, neo-conservative trying to push their religious ways on the rest of us. As you've probably heard by now if you hung out around /. long enough, there is a Republican running for president and a Texas Congressman who is more Libertarian then Republican. He believes in smaller government and less spending. Oh right, he also hasn't supported Bush much, if at all. Yet, he has continually be relegated to obscurity even from the very onset of the 2008 Presidential campaigns.

Excuse me, but citing Fox News of committing Liberal Bias.... wow... just wow. Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter were made into national media personalities BY conservatives FOR conservatives. Liberals did not pick Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter, liberals did not make Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter national media personalities, liberals aren't the audience giving them ratings to stay on TV. The "the media has a liberal bias" people selected and eagerly consume Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter.

Actually, I think if you read the OP post again. You will see what he is trying to say is that the mention of these people continually by the "liberal media" is more evidence of their bias. They attack these fringe individuals who have extremists views and make easy targets, while at the same time making the entirety of the "conservative media" look equally as nutty.

Who? Where? Anyone of any actual national importance and power? I guess maybe there's Ron Paul, but he lies somewhere beween Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter on the radical raving nutcase scale. And aside from him and Kucinich providing comic relief in the presidential race, he has about as much power as my mailman.

Ah yes, a brilliant method to attack anyone whose views you do not agree with, call them a "radical raving nutcase". So, does this mean everyone who supports "third parties" in the presidential campaigns should also fall into this area since they don't hold one of the two mainstream political ideologies. Oh wait, I am sorry, the singular mainstream political ideology. The two parties that we have decided to continually vote for look more and more like each other with every passing election. Republicans stopped thinking about less-spending long ago, and Democrats stopped being strictly about helping the little people and the environment long ago.

Seriously, do you think a political party led by money can have any clue what the people living in the low-income areas of Chicago, New York, or D.C. actually want/need from the government? The fact is current politics are RULED by big money. If you have the money, you can get elected. Of course, in order to do that you need to weasel your way closer and closer to the middle, which is why the parties have become so similar. To make matters worse, you have all fallen into this idea that any vote outside of these two parties is a wasted vote. If more people actually voted based on what they believe and actually used their brain some more on election day (and the rest of the year), I think this country would easily support a third or fourth party.

Because that is the the position of the majority of important influential democrat politicians, and the position of the majorty of their voter supporters.

This is not true. It is used as a gimmick to get the poor vote, but most of them want absolutely nothing to do with a national health-care program. Some of those big money democrats that I mentioned before almost assuredly get money from health insurance companies and/or big pharma. Neither have these companies have anything to gain from national health care and most everything to lose. I don't know about the rest of the world, bu