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Comment by shadowgovt | Hacker News Reader

But look at it from the organization's side. WHYY will lose listener-ship over his standup, whether or not that's fair. They'll be held accountable to the actions of the people they employ, whether or not that's fair.

Take the ability to control who they associate with out of the hands of a media company and you doom them to being burned by the court of public opinion. Reputation is all a news outlet has.

(It is, perhaps, worth noting that the arbiter didn't disagree with this line of reasoning. Return to employment was conditional on Jad deleting the offending material, so he's not to the place he wants to be regarding the eating of his cake and the having of his cake. It may still be the case that his two desired activities are incompatible with each other).

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Same deal in Brendan Eich’s short term as Mozilla’s CEO: the way he was ousted was grossly unreasonable, except that the furore and media circus had compromised his ability to be an effective leader—and so he resigned (voluntarily, according to all parties involved).

If you hire someone as a personality (e.g. radio reporter, CEO) their actions at all times clearly affect you. No perfect solution will exist.

Exercising speech that harms nobody is different than lobbying to strip people of their liberty.

No it isn't. If it's done off company time, it's not company business. Period.

I think they'll gain more audience now - through this reinstated reporter - than they out to lose.

They'll lose close minded people and gain a lot of open minded ones. The open minded tend to have a healthier mental state, have higher income, and attract more ad revenue.

And I don't think it's likely that the firing was motivated by the fear of bad financial results, but ideologically driven.

But to make that work out they first had to fire him! 4d chess ...

It was all planned!

This is WHYY we're talking about, not a small-time small-town public media station.

They already have all the listeners of that category that they're going to have.

And now they’re losing at least one of them!

Audience attention can be measured in seconds, instead of units of people. That seems to be the focus of modern media. I find it hard to believe they have more than 10% of their potential market's attention span.

> They'll be held accountable to the actions of the people they employ, whether or not that's fair.

Stuff happens. I'm unfairly held accountable for my gender, my age, the way I dress, and so on. I have to suck it up; so should WHYY.

I think US law (I'm not USAian) is extremely liberal in the kinds of contracts it allows employers to impose on staff. I think that's cause for regret; unless you're paying someone to work for you 24/7/365, or the employment contract explicitly says "No off-colour jokes, even on your own time, and we decide what off-colour means", then the employer has to find some other excuse for getting rid of the joker.

But I believe that in most of the USA, an employer can fire an employee for any reason or none. That makes hiring people a lot less risky; but it makes employment much more precarious. It's a rule that makes the strong stronger and the weak weaker, and I personally think it's a bad rule.

If they want to prioritize their ability to ban all expression outside of work they can negotiate that into the CBA - they will just have to give up whatever the union wants in return.

It is in the CBA. He was reinstated because they didn’t follow the correct termination policy.

> Take the ability to control who they associate with out of the hands of a media company and you doom them to being burned by the court of public opinion. Reputation is all a news outlet has.

Is his work good and true? That’s all that matters for his employer’s reputation.

This idea that journalists have to appear to be impartial ascetics should die. They are humans, and humans have perspectives no matter how they hide them. The hiding is what provides the fuel that a journalist is biased as if it’s a conspiracy. Knowing where the writer's coming from can be illuminating, and I can weight their biases myself.

> Is his work good and true? That’s all that matters for his employer’s reputation.

That's not how reputation works.

I listen to WHYY, and I never heard about this guy, his work, or his standup. I think WHYY is wrong, and the guy in the story is also kinda wrong. None of that changes whether or not I listen to the programs.

Exactly, this was a very dumb move for WHYY and as an npr supporter I'm already contemplating how to make trouble for them over this BS.

Guess what, they’re losing actual donations from people who won’t accept WHYY pulling this shit on workers.

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