20 Comments Add your own

• 1. Dave  |  February 14th, 2008 at 2:17 pm

  Honestly, I can understand it. When you’re a senior producer for a major CNN program and you’re writing stuff that the media would consider “controversial” from an editorial position, then you’re going to be held to the same account. Especially these days when everyone on the right and left screams about fairness and bias.

  I personally think a “cease and desist” command would be better but that’s me.

• 2. El Dangeroso  |  February 14th, 2008 at 3:06 pm

  But CNN hires talking heads like Lou Dobbs and Nancy Grace to scream at the top of their lungs every day. It’s ridiculous to think producers don’t have equally valid opinions and more eloquent ways of expressing them.

  Media companies need to streamline their vague guidelines about blogging. Hopefully, they’re hiring thoughtful, passionate, clever writers, and they need to understand that writing 20-second vo’s about Nicholas Sarkozy’s new wife won’t satisfy the need to create.

  Companies must allow employees to blog, with the guideline that they are not allowed to attack the company or its employees. But they should be allowed to spout off on the industry in general. (That’s why LR is so valuable.)

• 3. Mike  |  February 14th, 2008 at 4:02 pm

  Lou Dobbs and Nancy Grace are paid to give their opinions. Other employees - especially news personnel - are not. In fact, those related to the news are paid to stay non-bias and *not* give their opinions.

• 4. El Dangeroso  |  February 14th, 2008 at 6:38 pm

  So when a producer goes home and sits at his computer, he can’t have an opinion? That’s absurd.

  From now on, when I get hired somewhere, I’m going to use an alias. My imaginary alter ego will have no opinions or sense of humor. He will only exist within the four walls of the newsroom. At home, I’ll be myself.

  We’re talking about firing people for having and voicing opinions. Would you fire a producer for attending a Pro-Choice rally or contributing to a certain campaign? Would you fire a producer for beating his child or killing kittens in his spare time? Would you fire a producer for getting a DUI or sleeping around behind his wife’s back?

  In every city, at least one news anchor or reporter has been nailed for drunk driving or drug use. They’re always welcomed back on the air as if these were not choices, but some horrible disease thrust upon them. Those things are acceptable, I guess. Open and honest communication is not.

  Let no journalist be guilty of the unpardonable sin of exercising his right to free speech on his own time.

• 5. Cory Bergman  |  February 14th, 2008 at 6:38 pm

  I really hate it when media companies fire people for blogging. I fact, I think I was the first TV journalist employed at a media company to blog about the media.

  No, I don’t remember asking anyone. I just started doing it. When I went to work for Belo, they knew about it, and they’ve been tremendously supportive — no restrictions, no questions.

  But I’ve had two rules over the years: 1) don’t rip the company you work for and 2) don’t take a political position.

  (Yes, I’ve taken positions on technology issues like Net Neutrality, but that’s different.)

  So I find it hard to defend Pazienza here. If it was a couple blog posts on his personal blog, no big deal. But blogging for the Huffington Post right smack in the middle of a historic election… well, that could blow up in CNN’s face.

  (You could argue that it would be different if he were Dobb’s senior producer, because that’s a talk show, not a newscast.)

  So I hate to see this happen, but I see the rationale behind it. Journalists who blog are taking a risk when they start to take positions that could cast their company in a negative light.

• 6. Jason  |  February 14th, 2008 at 7:52 pm

  I blog on a company site, and comment frequently on other bloggers sites. I stay out of political discussions. It’s foolish. There’s no doubt we all have positions, but by being in this business, you make a choice to keep those positions to yourself.

  And if there’s a policy to get permission, then you should get permission.

• 7. Mich  |  February 15th, 2008 at 5:11 am

  I’m a little tired of folks using free speech as an excuse. “Personal” doesn’t mean free to post whatever you like. His blog is controversial.

  For example, when we’re in the middle of an election, and you’ve got a title to a post on your blog that reads, “Is Barack Obama gonna have to choke a bitch?” — I’d say that’s inappropriate, even it were just a clever play on words. But especially because you work for CNN. The public may not know that but your co-workers do. They see your big pretty picture. That’s enough.

  I don’t think the situation was handled properly. I think he should’ve had an opportunity to engage in an honest discussion about his blog and the potential impact on his work. Chances are there were other factors in play here.

  CNN’s statement that “employees must first get permission to write for a non-CNN outlet” is ridiculous. But so is his: “Does that mean I can’t post on a MySpace blog that my friends read?” If you’re a super-producer for CNN, what are you doing on MySpace anyway??? Is he 20? He seems to have an awful lot of free time to be posting away on his blog, MySpace and online to his wife. Maybe that’s why he was fired?

  To me, this all smells like the newscaster that likes to party on the weekends and doesn’t “get” why he was fired for pity’s sake. You have a responsibility at all times to behave accordingly. Especially these days.

  Sucks for him, Yes. But I think his resume is such that he’ll be fine. And maybe this is a blessing in disguise. Maybe his next job will allow a little more “freedom.”

• 8. Dave  |  February 15th, 2008 at 7:18 am

  I love how the media rip a politician or celebrity for some controversial belief that they may have uttered in private (or public) but then a producer whines and complains when they’re fired for saying much “worse” on a public blog. Welcome to the club!

  We all have a right to free speech but we also have to take responsibility for what we say. Also, you don’t have a “right” to a job. It’s essentially a contract between you and an employer and either parties can terminate it at any time. Fair is fair.

• 9. tdc  |  February 15th, 2008 at 8:36 am

  i guess it’s better than waterboarding him.

  you guys in the biz here really need to get over yourselves.

• 10. Tom Planchet  |  February 15th, 2008 at 1:00 pm

  Unfortunately, yes, I think CNN had the right, if not the obligation to terminate him. If he had been publicly ‘outed’ in some way, his blasting of Bush would only have legitimized the ‘liberal media’ bias claims. Yet, even if that weren’t the case, you can’t make your private views widely public or the public will sense and seek out what they see as a lack of neutrality in your reporting.

• 11. tdc  |  February 15th, 2008 at 1:09 pm

  and this ‘neutrality’ of the media allowed larry craig to do the nasty, get busted, booked, plead out and out of town before anyone in the media knew who the heck he was?

  get outta town

• 12. alex  |  February 15th, 2008 at 2:47 pm

  aside from actually taking political views on various subjects that may contradict the companys’ political endorsements…. news media websites (and tv programs) use “blogging” as a business tool to draw in pageviews and generate advertising…a service to offer consumers to have dynamic correspondences with professionals in the industry. there is a certain conflict of interest, not necessarily because of content, but because he’s stealing business.

• 13. P. Lee  |  February 15th, 2008 at 3:23 pm

  He can write whatever he wants…Just as long as he is now an ex-CNN producer. I can see it on Drudge already, “Commie CNN Wants Barak to Choke the Bitch” with a four-alarm sirens.

• 14. Tim  |  February 16th, 2008 at 8:18 am

  Hmmm ask yourselves - what if someone else had registered on the Huffington Post with the name Chez Pazienza (unlikely as it is, duplicate names do exist in the world)? Who would know whether it was the CNN producer, or not?

  He has a right to post his opinions in his personal life; and as long as he doesn’t claim they are CNN’s opinions, but his own, it should be OK.

  In my opinion there’s either more to this than is being said, or this is CNN’s lawyers worrying that someone will sue the network over the personal opinion of the employee.

• 15. Aidian  |  February 16th, 2008 at 9:36 am

  Did he post from the newsroom while on the clock using a company computer? Was he paid by the Huffington Post in violation of a personal services contract with CNN? Failing that, I don’t see how it’s any of his employers business. I’ll bet CNN’s legally solid, but the company’s straight wrong about this.

  He has a right to his opinions; he has a right to express them, and it’s not just wrong but unpatriotic of Time Warner to argue that it has a right to mute his expression.

  A quick search at the Center For Responsive Politics website (opensercets.org) shows Time Warner employees have given $69,663 to presidential candidates this election cycle. Among those donors are the CEO, CFO, etc. Pazienza was a (senior) grunt, and all he did was express his personal political views.

  Journalistically, In a “Big J” sense, we’re supposed to enable democracy. That’s not served by discouraging it in the trenches. I wish more of the people I’ve known in TV news actually KNEW enough about politics to get fired for blogging about them

  One last thing — opensecrets.org shows three ‘08 presidential donors that listed CNN as their employer. A producer and the chief PR hack gave to Obama; the largest donations were from an engineer who gave $1250 to Ron Paul.

  I know it’s a skewed sample, but every Ron Paul supporter I’ve met was a technical person in television. Something in the coffee over in engineering I think.

• 16. Safran  |  February 16th, 2008 at 10:28 am

  Company rules are company rules. If CNN requires you to get permission before blogging, you get permission. You’re not employed by the First Amendment - you’re employed by AOL/TW.

  I’m with Aidian - and probably most of you - on this. It’s bad policy. But you choose your employer.

  I bet, before long, blogging becomes mandatory at CNN. The strangest part is that the producers are the ones who should be blogging first.

• 17. Jason  |  February 16th, 2008 at 4:35 pm

  I guess, where does it stop? If it’s OK to blog about political issues (on your own time), is it OK to volunteer for campaigns? Contribute? Put up a bumper sticker or sign in your cubicle at work?

  When you go into Journalism you decide that pursuing the truth and sharing what you learn is more important than sharing your opinions via the internet.

  Blog away. But steer clear of political opinion. It’s not that hard to do. The world doesn’t need a senior producer blogging about Hillary. The world maybe did need this guy as a working journalist.

• 18. oakling  |  February 16th, 2008 at 7:12 pm

  Principles before personalities. All he had to do was ask for permission, and instead he got fired and then came up with a bunch of rationalizations about whether it would have been different if he had been blogging on MySpace. He could have avoided the whole thing just by asking.

  They didn’t have to fire him for blogging about controversial whatevers somewhere else - they had to fire him for totally disregarding the rules he agreed to follow in working there. Everything else - whether what he was saying was controversial, whether anyone knew who he was, whether there are gray areas in totally unrelated websites like MySpace, what effect this or that could have - is just smokescreen.

• 19. tdc  |  February 17th, 2008 at 11:24 am

  yeah, people REALLY want to read about a woman who happens to get her high heel stuck in a sewer grate while a ‘real journalist’ who happens to blog (and has commented on this thread twice about STANDARDS) observed her on his lunch hour. sure.

  i’ll withhold the blogger’s name. but suffice it to say, you wonder why people gravitate AWAY from such neutral tripe?

• 20. justme  |  February 18th, 2008 at 3:42 pm

  sure, there are rules.
  but cnn went beyond the call of duty.
  a reprimand? sure.
  but not this.
  chez is brilliant.
  he’ll end up with something bigger

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