AOL Fires Writer For Reporting The News

Tommy Christopher was a fairly visible figure at AOL News. Seems he made the mistake of wanting to report on the Playboy hatef***ing conservative women story, now he's out of a job after two seemingly problem free years. AOL parent company Time Warner distributes Playboy TV through their cable company. 

So much for AOL functioning as a legitimate news agency. Hard to imagine whatever credibility they ever had recovering from something like this. Time, Inc. is a subsidiary of Time Warner, as well. I guess Christopher will never make their Person of the Year list.

The evidence is stacking up quite high that AOL News fired liberal writer Tommy Christopher today due to his repeated attempts to get coverage of the Playboy attack list on AOL's Politics Daily. Christopher had first attempted to post this criticism of Playboy's sick list the day it was published on their website. However, he was surprised to find that shortly after putting his article on Politics Daily it was deleted by an editor.

Has the fact that AOL's parent company, Time Warner, has a business relationship with Playboy may have affected their editorial decisions? After all Time Warner is a major national distributor of Playboy TV through their cable company.

Comments

[HatlessHessian]

This is a pretty straightforward violation of the reporter's contract and he should be terminated for not following it. Sticking to the publisher's narrative is not negotiable in newsrooms. When I interned for a metro-Omaha newspaper in the 90s, I was routinely given assignments with the narrative provided. The most memorable one was: "Go do a man-on-the street piece, get 5 people commenting on the proposed sign ordinance. Make it anti-ordinance - Bob, the publisher, owns a tire store chain with some people and he doesn't want to have to change his signs. You'd better get one person who's pro-ordinance to make it 'balanced'."

People who think news is or should be objective have never seen a newsroom. It's 100% Upton Sinclair "The Jungle" sausage production pre-reform. Unfortunately, since there are no journalists interested in challenging the institution as Sinclair did, it's just been left to rot. Not surprisingly, even the dumbest consumers would stop buying hot dogs when it was incredibly obvious they were made from nothing more than dirt, rodents, hair and missing human fingers.

I would expect, however, that the termination of this employee is part of the publisher's effort to ensure a narrative consistent with the Obama news media bailout provisions, coming down the pike. One needs to stay consistent with the Obama program so that rescue funds can be helicoptered in.

[whitehall]

Can't trust the junk that passes for news on Yahoo either.

[Jabba the Tutt]

The Lefties never learn. The Left is like the Highlander movie series. There can only be one. If you don't follow the party line of the moment on the Left, you can be tossed overboard. If you are a Leftist in a Leftist Utopia, if you don't follow the party line of the moment, you can be put up against the wall and shot.

I hope liberal writer Tommy Christopher learns the correct lesson from his firing and gives up liberalism as a dead end. Literally, for some folks.