Update on Terry Frei of the Denver Post and tweet about Japanese Indy 500 winner

Bad Tweet(s) by Frei. I get that.
My issue is with the absence of any ladder of punishment/penalty. Why must it be "Tweet--->firing/end of career," in 0-to-60 mph fashion?
A two-week or one-month unpaid suspension wouldn't have delivered any message to Frei and the readers?
A demotion from columnist to a lower profile position wouldn't have shown the offender and the offended that the Post meant business?
There's so much anguish over layoffs on this board, even of "journalists" who do horse-bleep jobs and share responsibility for their horse-bleep outlets. Yet someone gets whacked because of a moment's bad judgment or even a thread of them in a wrong-headed direction and there's no second chance, court of appeal, etc.
I feel the same thing about plagiarism. It's bad -- but career-snuffing bad?
If there's no middle ground on penalites, it simply lends credence to the idea this is an excuse to dump a big salary or an employee who isn't worth having around -- which should have been addressed on its face, prior to this mishap.
And if we need that "death penalty" as a deterrent, then maybe that wins the argument on the real death penalty.

 

We'll never know this - unless Frei decides to include it on an update - but I wonder if the tweet itself would have led to a rung on the ladder of punishment, like you mentioned, and then he decided to see how many rungs he could land on in the space of a holiday weekend.

When he got the chance to apologize, he showed he really wasn't sorry and was only interested in selling books and being an asshole. Same with the update, more about the book and promising/threatening that he's got much worse he could have tweeted.

Honest question: Did his initial apology, later apology or update convince anyone that he's truly remorseful about what he did? The apologies/update read like they come from a man who had no interest in remaining employed.

He either gets it and he's dead-set on showing his ass to as many people as possible, as much as possible, or he doesn't get it and he's a loose cannon the Post should be worried about at every turn as long as he was in their employ.

 

At this point, it's happened so many times that media with social media accounts know that it's a real possibility if they put something stupid/racist out there. So don't fucking do it. There's an environment out there and we all know the consequences by now. SO DON'T FUCKING DO IT. Think 10 seconds before hitting "tweet."

 

For the first 25 years or so of my career, my various employers' policy in general was "three strikes and you're out" -- whether for substance-abuse problems, ethical breaches or tasteless, offensive writing that made it into print or online. In general, "strike one" led to a stern talking-to. "Strike two" was cause for disciplinary action. "Strike three" was "You're fired."

Rightly or wrongly, that seems to have gone the way of stable print circulation and 30 percent profit margins.

 

How do we know this is strike one and there wasn't other nonsense handled behind the scenes?

 

I keep seeing people say that Frei was trying to sell books in his apology. Bullshit. He was explaining where he came from on this issue, and writing a book is part of who he is. He's written several, right? He mentioned the book in context -- it was a book about the war that the tweet was about. Saying he was trying to sell books in the apology -- and using THAT as one of the excuses to fire him -- is not well thought out. It's a knee-jerk reaction, not an argument.

Similarly, he didn't threaten that he had worse things to tweet. He explained that if the winner had been German he might have said something worse that would have gotten him in grouble. That's not a threat. That's an honest admission, and it's a defense to the charge of racism. Most of all, it provides context. To read that as a threat is to intentionally ignore the facts, and the man's words.

 

That's a fair point. The tone of his tweets would seem to indicate some troublemaker potential. No way for us, on the outside, to know for sure.

 

Always possible and if that's the case, then he climbed the "ladder." Don't know him. Know a couple of people who do know him and speak highly of him. I suppose that's where the union comes in, to make sure other possible disciplinary actions weren't skipped. But if it was "one strike and he's out," I hope the boss or bosses who made that call work under the same rule.

 

Hey Terry!