“I just became the first person in the history of newspapers to be fired for writing a paper’s most-read article,” Drew Johnson of the Chattanooga Times Free Press — at least until today — tweets. At the Blaze, Jason Howerton responds:
The opinion page editor at the Chattanooga Times Free Press says he has been fired for writing an editorial that was highly critical of President Barack Obama’s new “jobs plan.”
“Take your jobs plan and shove it, Mr. President: Your policies have harmed Chattanooga enough,” the headline reads.
Drew Johnson, the now apparently former opinion page editor at the Free Press, announced his firing on Twitter Thursday.
“I just became the first person in the history of newspapers to be fired for writing a paper’s most-read article,” Johnson wrote.
In response, as Jim Romensko.com notes, the paper claims that Johnson was fired because he “violated the normal editing process when he changed the headline. The newspaper’s decision to terminate Johnson had nothing to do with the content of the editorial, which criticized the president’s job creation ideas and Chattanooga’s Smart Grid. The Free Press page has often printed editorials critical of the president and his policies.”
Romensko also links to the the Atlanta Journal Constitution tut-tutting that Johnson’s headline was “rude.”
Well, we can’t have that. In the world of the MSM, when a Democrat is in power, we must be a polite and docile palace guard. Breaking news that hurts Dear Leader — or even potential Dear Leader — must be buried, sharp edges must be sanded smooth.
The unspoken motto of political correctness has long been “Better dead than rude.” Evidently that extends to careers in the legacy media as well.
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