Brody's Scribbles... Journalistic Integrity-Free Speech-Media Ethics & The Internet: When Is The Line Crossed?

By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) Apr 7 | Last November, a few days after the election results in Maine, Larry Grard, an 18-year veteran reporter at the Morning Sentinel newspaper in Waterville, Maine, was fired after his employer discovered that he responded to an e-mail from the Human Rights Campaign, regarding the same-sex marriage ballot proposal that effectively banned those marriages as being legal under Maine's constitution.

According to an article today in the Bangor Daily News, staff writer Eric Russell quotes Grard as saying that as a Christian, he was offended by some of the rhetoric contained in an e-mail from the Human Rights Campaign of Washington, D.C., that blamed the outcome of Maine’s same-sex marriage vote on hatred of gays. Using his private e-mail account, Grard responded:

“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!”

He was fired after management at MaineToday Media, which owns the Portland Press Herald, the Kennebec Journal in Augusta and the Morning Sentinel, found out about the e-mail. Regarding Grard’s dismissal, MaineToday Media’s publisher referred to a statement released last December in which he denied that Grard’s firing had anything to do with his beliefs about same-sex marriage.

“Mr. Grard’s admitted improper and unacceptable conduct, lack of judgment and associated behavior constituted a serious breach of the legitimate employee and journalistic expectations of company management,” the letter read.

Michael Socolow, a journalism professor at the University of Maine who teaches media ethics, said Grard’s case may become more common in ever-changing newsrooms.

“In the era of Facebook and blogging and multiple e-mail address, reporters have to be extra sensitive in interacting with audiences,” he said. “Reporters never used to have the kind of direct communication with their audience that they have today.”

Socolow said Grard likely erred by engaging with a reader the way he did but also said,

“Reporters need freedom to do the job.”

The rest of the article details entry of two religious organisations into Grard's case to assist in his defence at likely future court actions. But what is more to the point is this thought; 

"Was the media company's decision appropriate to the circumstances as Grard used his personal email to respond to what he perceived as a purely not job related response promulgating his own personal views on the subject?"

While I do not agree at all with his personally held viewpoints on same-sex marriage as a Gay man, as a journalist I must disagree with the paper's reaction to his response to HRC and  ultimately the firing of Mr. Grard. 

Journalists-at the end of the day- are human too and even though it may seem as though we as a profession are on a similar basis of being perceived as working around the clock, not unlike law enforcement or medical personnel as examples, we're not. I completely agree with Professor Socolow: “Reporters need freedom to do the job.”