Award-winning TV reporter Tom Burlington, who is white, is claiming that racism is the basis of Philadelphia’s Fox 29 failure to renew his contract in 2007.
And the lawsuit that he filed in 2009 has been finally green-lighted to go to trial. U.S. District Judge Barclay Surrick wrote a memorandum last month This case has been pending for over five years. We will not further delay its resolution by permitting “piecemeal review and its attendant delays and waste of time.”
What Burlington says happened is that during a June 23, 2007 discussion about a possible story regarding a mock funeral of the word “nigger” by the Philadelphia Youth Council of the NAACP, Burlington said “nigger.”
Burlington was to co-anchor the show that night with Joyce Evans, who did not attend the meeting. It came back to Ms. Evans, who is black, what he said. She made a complaint the next day to the station’s Assistant News Director, Leslie Tyler, who is also black.
Burlington claims that Ms. Evans told him “Because you’re white you can never understand what it’s like to be called a nigger and … you cannot use the word nigger”
Burlington says Ms. Evans then encouraged fellow employees to denounce him to management.
He said he was forced to meet with the station’s Department of Human Resources, Ameena Ali, who is black. She asked him to give his side of the story. He did verbatim. “Tom, you’re still saying that word; why are you doing that?” said said according to court papers.
Burlington was suspended.
Burlington says he apologized to the station’s black employees, was given a stern warning in writing, and made to undergo racial-sensitivity training.
It wasn’t enough. The station told Burlington on July 12, 2007, after 20 years his contract would not be renewed.
Ms. Evans remains the anchor of the weekend “Fox 29 News at Six.”
Hopefully, Burlington takes these gutless fools and bigots for everything they have. While it is sign of immaturity and low intelligence to be pointlessly offensive — which Tom Burlington by all accounts wasn’t — it is a sign of evil to be merciless.
Speech codes and political correctness have no place in true journalism, which the establishment media has long since stopped practicing. It is time to start destroying them. Speech codes and political correctness, that is. The old media is doing just a fine job destroying itself. Enjoy your vacation Brian Williams. What are the odds comedian Jon Stewart replaces him?