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CNN Producer Fired Because of Personal Blog

Some of you might have read of this already but for those who haven't heard or read of this story, a CNN producer was recently fired because of something he posted on his personal blog. What exactly did he do/write to get fired? Here's the exact paragraph from his personal blog named Deus Ex Malcontent that CNN cited as a violation: I wake up every morning baffled as to why America hasn’t deported George Bush and Dick Cheney, Hollywood hasn’t stopped trying to convince me that Sarah Jessica Parker is attractive, gullible soccer moms haven’t realized that they share absolutely no kinship with Oprah, and Fox canceled Firefly. The employee's name is Chez Pazienza, Emmy Award winner and former producer of CNN's morning show American Morning. Apparently, CNN's employee handbook states that any writing done for a "non-CNN outlet" was prohibited or has to go through CNN's network standards and practices department for approval. This was something that Chez wasn't aware of when he started his blog and only knew about it a month earlier when he accidentally came across an employee handbook in someone else's desk. After talking with his boss and a HR representative about this matter, twenty four hours later he was fired. Chez wrote a long blog post in regards to this issue. Below are some excerpts from the said post. I hadn't seen a pertinent rule and never signed any agreement stipulating that I wouldn't write on my own time. I hadn't divulged my place of work and wasn't writing about what went on at the office. The views expressed on my blog, Deus Ex Malcontent, were mine and mine alone. I represented no one but myself, and I didn't make a dime doing it. I let them know exactly what I had thought when I read the rule, namely that it was staggeringly vague and couldn't possibly apply to something as innocuous as a blog.

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