Chilliwack Progress editor fired after anti-Christian remarks
Chilliwack's oldest community newspaper has parted ways with its editor, Paul Henderson, after he posted a series of tweets mocking Christian prayer requests for a toddler fighting for his life after nearly drowning in Cultus Lake.
Now, this is going to be potentially a really unpopular opinion given the nature of what the guy did, but I'm going to have to come down on the side of free speech here. I don't think that anyone deserves to be fired for posting an opinion and honestly this doesn't even seem that outrageous he just comes across as a typical cringe Atheist+ type to me and I'm not religious.
Mind you I don't have context here and I'm out of the loop, but this is the sort of thing that does actually make the right look bad even to people who are fair about them. Unless you're going to tell me the guy started stalking the child's family and posting horrible shit about the child then yeah that would make sense but the worse crime he's committed here is being a typical cringe leftist.
When you become a journalist by definition sharing any bias regarding a story is grounds to be removed.
This isn't a free speech issue it is about a lack of journalistic integrity.
That's in reference to their articles and stories not their personal social media profiles.
See that is the problem, once you take up a position as editor you are now publicly an unbiased figure. Any public stances you take puts your position at jeopardy.
He chose to be an editor so he's responsible for his public statements. In this case he was irresponsible so he was rightly removed.
Certain sacrifices have to be made for impartiality and he refused to.
Unless he's stated his social media profile is for that purpose you don't have an argument my instinct is telling me this is pure outrage bait and I'm not buying it.
That's not how that works. People don't lose their personal, principled right to free speech by virtue of taking any job. This wasn't just a news story. This was an event that happened within the community, being commented on by a member of that community and in that capacity.
Why even try to erode free speech? How could this kind of petty bullshit possibly help anyone?