Journalists and opinions: Another Occupy protestor fired from journo job
Another journalist who joined the protests at Occupy Wall Street has been fired.
Another journalist who joined the protests at Occupy Wall Street has been fired.
Caitlin Curran was the web producer for The Takeaway, a morning news program co-produced by WNYC Radio and Public Radio International – until two weeks ago when she headed to the protests with her boyfriend, and a pithy protest sign featuring a line from an Atlantic article.
Curran intended to observe what happened at the protest and tweet about it while her boyfriend held the sign. When his arms tired, however, they switched roles. Someone clicked her picture while she was holding the sign and it went viral.
The picture resonated with people; other journalists wrote about it, including the Atlantic writer who penned the quote on the sign. Curran thought it might make a good radio segment and pitched it to The Takeaway. The next day, the show’s general manager fired her.
She writes about the whole thing on Gawker:
He was inconsolably angry, and said that I had violated every ethic of journalism, and that this should be a "teaching moment" for me in my career as a journalist. The segment I had pitched, of course, would not happen. Ironically, the following day Marketplace did pretty much the exact segment I thought would have been great on The Takeaway, with Kai Ryssdal discussing the sign and the Goldman Sachs deal it alluded to in terms that were far from neutral.
Last week, we wrote about Lisa Simeone, another journalist who was fired for her participation in the Occupy movement. We’ll ask the same question as we did then: Should journalists be canned for voicing their opinions? And: Can we protest?
