Free Speech, Editorial Freedom, and Job Losses
Recently, the world of sports journalism has had a couple of controversial staffing decisions. The highest profile decision, at least in Canada, was Don Cherry's ouster from Sportsnet after making controversial comments about immigrants. Slightly lower profile was Barry Petchesky, who was Acting Editor in Chief of Deadspin, until he was dismissed two weeks ago, allegedly, for refusing to "stick to sports" . These have set off firestorms about the state of free speech. To be clear, I have no meaningful information about the terms and conditions of Cherry's or Petchesky's relationships with their respective organizations - were they employees or contractors? Unionized? What did the contracts say? While it's conceivable that a contract could contain terms to the contrary, this article will assume the general proposition, that a media organization is entitled to control its own content, and will explore the extent to which principles of free speech and