KDKA fires employee for chyron title
January 30, 2019KDKA-TV (2) ran a report on Monday regarding the upcoming Super Bowl in which the New England Patriots will be playing. Social media was aflutter with a screen grab of Patriots QB Tom Brady speaking at a press conference. KD’s chyron on the screen said “Tom Brady, Known Cheater”, no doubt referencing the “Deflategate” scandal a few years ago.
Sports Illustrated reported today that the unidentified employee has been fired.
“While fans are entitled to have personal opinions, we have a journalistic responsibility to provide unbiased reporting,” KDKA said in a statement to SI.com. “The graphic that appeared Monday violated our news standards. The individual who created the graphic no longer works for KDKA-TV.”
SI had a pretty good statement asking that we “lighten up” and maybe the station was a little overboard firing the employee. We’ve all heard stories of internal “joke” production making it on the air, or someone punching up the wrong key and seeing “Debbie Does Dallas” on broadcast TV. Maybe this was the case. . or maybe this person thought putting their own opinion up would help. Something.
I share his sentiment, but the way he handled this was shady — even stupid. In this age when certain political pundits and office holders call everything they disagree with “Fake News,” the media must do everything it can to not give them ammo. KDKA did the right thing by terminating him.
Suspension without pay would have been fitting. Termination seems excessive unless hhe had other issues in their employment jacket.
I suspect the latter is true.
The employee has been identified. In fact he has been speaking out about this. I am not going to ID him here but his name is all over the web.
Right. We’re not giving him any more air time here!
Having worked for CBS – there are certain standards that MUST BE UPHELD. And in most cases your employment agreement does not allow for pranksters. A lot of networks has left the door wide open for folks to get away with editorial comment in what they call legitimate news. When you work for a network owned and operated facility – you know the rules! No excuses! That’s why we have rules boys and girls!