Quote:
Originally posted by eroswebmaster
However, if you wish to come to the office or while on company time and push a political agenda...cya...and I don't want any fucking government telling me I don't have the right to get rid of your antagonistic ass.
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Funny how you feel those working for you should not have minds of their own.
How about the implications of corporations using the threat of harassment and firing to quell individualism, diversity, and freedom of expression?
The world isnt black and white. The point is objectivity and this is the MEDIA...or are you so media-ignorant that you cant understand the importance of OBJECTIVITY?
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Reporter arrested protesting war is fired
By Chris Gaither, Globe Staff, 4/24/2003
SAN FRANCISCO - The San Francisco Chronicle fired Henry Norr, one of its technology reporters, one month after suspending him for taking a day off from work to protest the war in Iraq.
Norr, 57, was one of about 1,400 protesters arrested here on March 20, the day after American bombs began falling on Baghdad. The four-year veteran of the Chronicle spent the day in jail, along with his wife and 25-year-old daughter. Each was charged with being a pedestrian in the road, for blocking traffic.
Though the paper dismissed Norr for improperly claiming sick leave that day, his situation also illustrates the difficulty in balancing journalists' desire to express their political views and news organizations' desire to appear objective to their audiences.
Aly Colon, an ethics professor with the Poynter Institute, a journalism school in St. Petersburg, Fla., said he found it ''ironic'' that newspapers, often watchdogs for the right to free speech, sometimes act against employees for expressing their views outside of work. He questioned whether terminating Norr was the best solution, but said the Chronicle must protect its credibility.
''When individuals stand for something that causes people to question whether they can be fair in what they do, something has to be done to address that,'' Colon said.
Norr said he never hid his arrest from his bosses. He said he sent e-mail to his editors, late on the eve of the protests, telling them of his intention to be arrested. He also asked for a month's leave earlier in March to devote all his time to protesting - a request that he said went unanswered.
Yet when he filled out his timecard on March 21, he marked the missed time as a sick day. He said he regrets having done that, rather than putting in for a vacation day. But he said he never hid his reasons for missing work, and that his manager signed the card the following Monday, two days before his suspension.
''If they had a column on the timecard for `jail day,' I would have put that,'' he said in an interview yesterday.
The Chronicle pulled Norr's next column, about technology that prevents unwanted e-mail, before publication, then suspended him on March 26. The paper fired him this week.
Representatives of the Chronicle, owned by Hearst Corp., declined to comment, saying they do not discuss personnel issues.
In a termination letter sent to Norr late Monday, Chronicle editor Phil Bronstein cited the ''falsification'' of Norr's timecard and ''an improper claim for paid sick leave'' as sufficient grounds for dismissal. ''Your personal political activities are no excuse to permit a false claim,'' Bronstein wrote.
But he suggested that Norr's political activities played a role in the decision to fire him. While on unpaid leave, Norr was arrested and hit with wooden pellets fired by police in other protests around the Bay Area, actions that Bronstein called ''persistent violations'' of the newspaper's ethics policies.
''Even if you had not claimed a paid workday, we would not permit you to return to work in the Chronicle newsroom,'' Bronstein wrote. ''To do so would irreparably compromise our journalistic standards and the expectations we have for everyone in the newsroom.''
Norr, however, said his protests violated none of the Chronicle's ethics policies at the time. Since his suspension, the newspaper has amended its policies to explicitly prohibit antiwar protests by its staff members.
The local newspaper union, the Northern California Media Workers Guild, has filed grievances against the newspaper for the suspension, the termination, and the changes to the Chronicle's ethics policy.
Norr is due in court today. He has not yet entered a plea. The charge against his daughter has been dismissed; his wife is awaiting a court appearance.