Mississippi State beat writers vs Louisiana-Lafayette

It's not really black and white. People have their shades of gray.

 

That's the problem - you can't define it, only the person signing the checks can, and it's going to be different in every case. If this was a first offense, shall we say, I think two weeks at home without pay would have been an appropriate punishment, with absolute zero tolerance moving forward. But again, this goes back to the question of how much equity, if any, was built up with management on the job.

 

"I'm not going to go as far as to say they're not people..."

Short of screaming a racial slur can you get much worse than that?

 

See, that's what sort of bothers me here. If you don't know what the rules are, how can you take care to follow them? It's easy to say "common sense", but an instance like this shows that it's clearly more than that.

 

Common sense would have told him to not denigrate an entire region like he did

 

I think there are plenty of instances where there is room for interpretation.

I do not believe this is an example of that.

 

It's the comedians' lament: "You tell me to push right up to the edge without telling me where the edge is." All that said, a guy who works with me and has a podcast of his own made an excellent point - at any point in this thing thy could have just said, "Eh, we went too far, let's don't post this." You can write anything you want, no matter how offensive - but you don't have to push the button that says "PRINT."

 

We are not comedians. He went on a radio show as a representative of his employer and made comments denigrating an entire ethnic group. It's an obvious firing.

Imagine if this was a San Francisco beat writer talking about all the Mexicans in Los Angeles, then tell me this warrants only a two-week suspension.

 

Beg to differ.
A good number of people in this business clearly view themselves as comedic talents.
Witness career arcs of Reilly, Kornheiser and others.
No coincidence their quality began to plateau after it was determined they weren't as funny as they thought.

 

Whatever that was, it wasn't a radio show. The recording they did gain wider purchase on someone else's radio show.

 

Podcast, radio show. The only difference is method of delivery.

 

Point is there is no clear-cut line. One guy thinks it's funny; guy next to him finds it offensive.