The Censors Won Today

Yesterday, FTVLive showed you a tweet from the Sports Anchor at Gray owned KVEN (Rapid City).

Padraic Duffy posted this.

Now if you read Duffy’s Twitter you can see that this post was being sarcastic and his political leanings are on the left.

But, therein lies the problem. If you work in TV news, your political leanings left or right should not be on display.

After FTVLive posted the story, Duffy says that he got in trouble with the bosses at Gray. He posted this linking to the FTVLive story:

First off, FTVLive did not want to get you fired. Our job is to cover the industry and call out the good, bad and ugly with this industry. In sports terms, we just call balls and strikes, nothing more, nothing less.

Second, you were not censored. You are free to say what you want, but Gray who owns your station also has the right to protect their product and company reputation. As a Journalist, you should know that expressing your opinion, liberal of conservative is wrong.

No one is telling you that you can’t do that, but Gray is saying if you want to do so, you can’t work for us. It seems simple.

People often say that their right to free speech is being infringed on, but the company has its rights as well. They feel that if you are hired as a Journalist, you need to act like a Journalist. If you want to scream your political opinion, go ahead and do so, but not while you are a company employee.

Gray gets it, even if you don’t. You were not censored, you were asked to do the duties of your job.

I should also point out that Padraic Duffy’s wife emailed me to say that her husband is “very liberal, very caring, father of three.” She ended her email with, “From the bottom of my heart, fuck you.”

She seems nice.