Fired!!!

Danville Register & Bee Publisher Steve Kaylor called me this morning to advise me I'd been terminated from The Danville Register & Bee. It is not in their policy to allow employees to object to the abuse, bullying, harassment and humiliation of women.

Those that do are terminated. Now - if I had a porn collection like one of the editors there, or video taped women's breasts, or slept with a subordinate and broke up my marriage, or had two or three DUI's I'd be fine. Those are covered and acceptable behaviors under the Media General policy since no one has been fired for those actions. You can be gay - and some are, and object to Christianity and be okay. But don't be Mormon, or Baptist regardless of what you believe about gays - because acknowledging your sexual beliefs is okay, but acknowledging your religious beliefs is grounds for termination.

Starting a blog denouncing illegal behavior is somehow unacceptable, but video assault is acceptable? An attorney I spoke with said that filming women's breasts without their consent or approval is a criminal act. But - Media General has different lawyers and videotaping women's bodies for the fun and amusement of the male newsroom staff is not against Media General's company policy. Yeah. What's wrong with that picture?!

Let me tell you about Media Generals lawyers....at a training session on libel and slander we were not allowed to tape [he he he....] or take notes of the training because then it could, the attorney told us, be subpeonaed if anything in the training ever came into court!! Now what, you should be asking yourself, could possibly be said in a training session that might end up in a lawsuit? And why, you should ask yourself, would Media General attorneys worry about that?

Because we asked about incidents, stories things that reporters were doing that WERE illegal - that's why! And some of those comments etc. COULD VERY WELL be called into court! But - the attorney took the paper HE wrote those comments down, folded it up in his bag and took it all back to be shredded and destroyed. It's gone. With malicious forethought in an attempt to circumvent future litigation - it's all gone....now - how far do any of you think you'll get in a lawsuit against The Danville Register & Bee?

In spite of all that - people do win...