Chopping WOOD

Back on June 14th, FTVLive FIRST told you about an internal memo that was sent to the news staff at Nexstar’s WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids.

The memo came out from Assistant News Director Amy Fox at the direction of News Director Stanton Tang.

The memo informed the staff that some of the station’s “conservative viewers” were upset with the station’s stories on Gay Pride month.

The memo said it part:

“We should not cover every Pride event that we learn about. We need to do some work to discern the newsworthy-ness of the event. If we are covering pride events we need to consider how to make the story balanced and get both sides of the issue.”

Both sides of the issue? WTF?!

When you cover a Black History Month story, are Reporters at WOOD supposed to talk to the Ku Klux Klan to get the other side of the story?

If you’re doing a story on a Jewish event, do you interview a Nazi to get the other side?

After the memo came out and was obtained by FTVLive, the suits at Nexstar started investigating the matter.

Ultimately, the News Director and the Assistant ND were fired.

But it doesn’t end there. Two WOOD-TV Producers were also fired. Not because they supported the memo but because they spoke out against it.

Producers Luke Stier and Madeline Odle, who are engaged with each other, posted messages to social media, saying they did not agree with the memos and showed their support for the LBGTQ+ community.

The two Producers were fired for speaking out against a “homophobic” message from station management and “leaking” the memo and information.

Total bullshit from Nexstar, which often seems to be more worried about information getting out than they are the what is happening inside its stations.

Tang claims to have hired an attorney.

We think the two Producers should as well and would have a much better change than Tang at winning their case.

Just saying…