Wise choice.

But then:

I am challenging anybody on the notion that a reporter should not be punished for revealing or injecting his personal opinion in the public sphere.

Rachel Maddow isn’t. Chris Matthews isn’t. Keif Olbermann isn’t. Anderson Cooper isn’t.

Furthermore, what makes your argument ludicrous is that you are acknowledging that the media is not objective, but that people in it with whom you disagree should be thrown out of it on the basis of objectivity.

Finally, this was a sweet one.

We all know the low level thuggish tactics of the American Left, and therefore with that knowledge should never give them any cause, let alone basic journalistic acknowledgment that as a reporter you are held to a different standard, to get rid of us.

Or, put differently, because there are criminals about, we shouldn’t enforce the laws and rules against them because they might get upset.

That probably explains why Tim, who’s in law enforcement, needs laws that guarantee him a job based on his sexual orientation.

I’m not going to challenge anybody on the fact that the media is liberal, or that a leftist reporter in the same situation would have kept his job. I am challenging anybody on the notion that a reporter should not be punished for revealing or injecting his personal opinion in the public sphere.

So you go with the most asinine angle? Good job.

So you don’t watch any of the MSM? Oh wait, you cited Rachel Maddow here

Let me hit some of her greatest hits not wanting the truth to get in the way of the democrats power.

More Maddow opinion journalism here.

Or how about ehr deciding what counts as news?

Or how about her allergy to the facts?

Of course all these come from her being on the air. If you think a reporter shouldn’t have the right to an opinion in his private life, surely such bias on the air is so much worse?

Oh, I forget, in Tim’s world, you can’t have an opinion unless you agree with him.

If anything, the guy in question KNOWS that he works in a field where he is the minority and should be MORE careful. We all know the low level thuggish tactics of the American Left, and therefore with that knowledge should never give them any cause, let alone basic journalistic acknowledgment that as a reporter you are held to a different standard, to get rid of us.

I don’t hold a steak in front of a rabid dog and then have a girl fit when it bites my hand. If you’re to go jump in the lion den to play, don’t bitch when you break the rules and get bit. I don’t go stand in the middle of any college campuses asking where all the Republicans are and cry when I can’t find any…

Sentinel editor Bill Thompson fired Grard the next week. According to Grard, Thompson told Grard that Thomas had demanded the paper terminate Grard’s employment. “There’s no wiggle room,” Grard claimed Thompson told him.

Thomas disputes that. In a response to the story, Thomas said, “The day following the loss in Maine, HRC released a statement and shortly thereafter reporter Larry Grard responded with the following: ’Who are the hateful, venom-spewing ones? Hint: Not the yes on 1 crowd. You hateful people have been spreading nothing but vitriol since this campaign began. Good riddance!’

“At no time did I ask Larry to be fired,” Thomas continued, “but instead had one email interaction with his editor where I said: ’I received the below email this morning after our national media release was sent to your team. … It’s frankly, just not acceptable coming from a news organization the morning after our defeat.’

http://tinyurl.com/ye5v9jj

As far as we know, Grard sent the e-mail from his private account. Therefore, how can Thomas say the e-mail came from “a news organization”? This sounds to me like a CYA on Thomas’ part.

And why was Grard’s wife fired too?

Did you read it?

“who are the hateful, venom-spewing ones?”

That’s what HRC said about anyone who disagrees with gay-sex marriage.

Therein lies the problem, Talkingpointsprime; you and your fellow bigots called everyone who disagrees with you haters and venom-spewers. You aren’t objective; you’re a hatemongering bigot, and someone turned that rhetoric back on you. As is typical for you liberal puppets, you can’t handle what you dish out.

Classic example of your hypocrisy and cluelessness:

Can you find some examples of the No on 1 crowd to back this up?

Easy.

In a defiant speech to several hundred lingering supporters, No on 1 campaign manager Jesse Connolly pledged that his side “will not quit until we know where every single one of these votes lives.”

So more white powder mailing, more church vandalism, and more examples of what the gay-sex marriage thugs are willing to do.

Why do you support that, Talkingpointsprime? Why do you support vandalism and hate against people who vote differently than you do? Is it because, as a gay-sex liberal, you must make excuses for every gay person’s bad behavior because they’re gay, just like you do for your pedophile supporters like Kevin Jennings and NAMBLA?

To the point ……. the reporter called the HRC “haters” and so they took his scalp. Sounds like Neanderthal inflexible intolerance to me. Sort of like hate.

H, just wanted to block this, so maybe a few of the lefties will actually read it.

I assume you don’t watch any of the MSM then?

He was told that Trevor Thomas, deputy communications director of the Human Rights Campaign, had Googled his name, discovered he was a reporter, and was demanding Grard be fired.

Despite the awkward passive construction of that phrase (well,I didn’t write) it does indicate that HRC was asking the paper fire the reporter.

How the ell do you blame HRC for the fact that the newspaper made a judgment that the journalist violated their standards? If you have a problem with him being fired, then trash the people who fired him.

They informed his editor, who made the decision.

To what end? Were they hoping his editor would give him a medal?

I hate anything involving anything that ties hate to political correctness. Excuse me, but if you gut a person because you hate him it does not change what you did or what happened to the poor soul one iota. All this “hate” crap results from libs who can forgive anything unless they are really irked.

To the point ……. the reporter called the HRC “haters” and so they took his scalp. Sounds like Neanderthal inflexible intolerance to me. Sort of like hate.

But, I can always be enlightened.

I’m sure that *some* part of your post is still true. Maybe a few clauses?

“A lot of the gay marriage activists have been doing a lot of hating.”
Can you find some examples of the No on 1 crowd to back this up? That is what they were emailing about, you know, not Prop 8. Or were you just going with your usual, “gay people who try to defend our rights suck” theme and guessing at the rest? And once again, no comment on the hate expressed by the right? Ever?

“who are the hateful, venom-spewing ones? Hint: Not the yes on 1 crowd. You hateful people have been spreading nothing but vitriol since this campaign began. Good riddance!”"

So, you know, he “basically” said something, which he shared with people. What he, you know, “actually” said is above.

Tell me, BDB: do you think the above email shows objectivity and balance?

The field of journalism has to rely on the appearance of objectivity, and as such, may have certain rules concerning the expression of personal opinion.

Uh, Tim, please.

Reporters make their personal opinions clear all the time, and not just when editorializing or taking part in opinion programing. They make their biases very clear in their reporting all the time.

The main reason that the profession of journalism is said to be dying is because the left turned it into a propaganda machine.

Grard’s firing fits perfectly in line with this. He never, as you claim, “willingly [stepped] out of the role” of being “an objective observer and reporter.” He simply reacted privately to a message that had been sent to his e-mail account. That’s not observing and reporting. That’s just being a private individual.

That said, I do hope you’re holding environmental reporters to a similar standard, you know, for the sake of consistency.

Tim, I pretty much agree with you here:

HRC falls into the category of leftists groups that labels all dissent from its views as hateful. It deserves to be called out on its own hateful behavior.

I might not go as far as you in saying it calls all dissent hateful, but like the president, they do have a bad habit of lashing out at those offering opposing views.

And as far as hateful behavior goes, can there be a more blatant example than demanding the firing of a man for send one e-mail that you don’t like? This is disgusting in the extreme.

any lawyer worth his/her salt would be advising this guy to not make any public statements pending the arbitration

Don’t count on that Chad. The court of public opinion counts in matters like these as well. Chad made this claim:

“A lawyer said to me, ‘What if you’d agreed with [the Human Rights Campaign]? Would the company fire you for that? Of course they wouldn’t have,’” he said.

I’d say it’s fairly obvious the lawyer is right given the political biases of most of the press (and the fact that Grard’s paper editorialized in favor of SSM). Grard and his lawyer may want to generate as much sympathy as possible amongst the general public.

i’m sure HRC gets a ton of hate mail every day. why would they single-out this one guy?

Precisely because he is a reporter from a friendly newspaper. Reporters are presumed by leftists to be fellow travelers, and to have one who isn’t at a paper friendly to HRC’s cause was more than the org could bare.

Are reporters supposed to stop having political opinions and expressing them privately?

No, ILC. Reporters are supposed to be good little leftists. Politically, culturally, and economically. Period. Grard wasn’t. So his career was to be attacked (and hopefully destroyed).

Of course it is true we only have Grard’s side of the story. But given that his union says he hasn’t had any previous disciplinary problems and claims his contract “requires that there be progressive discipline,” the matter sounds like typical leftist behavior to me.