Public’s ‘Right to Know’ Censored: AOL Fires Writer Tommy Christopher for Reporting Sexist Hate-Rape Playboy Article
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on June 5, 2009
Newsroom classic comedy, 'His Girl Friday', starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell
This news cover-up isn’t like that of the film’s corrupt police force or cynical politicians or cutthroat reporters undermining colleagues to scoop a big story. It’s Internet giant AOL trying to bury a controversial story. AOL decided to fire PoliticsDaily.com news-blog writer Tommy Christopher. Christopher is an accomplished, respected writer who believes in freedom of the press and the public’s “right to know” about Playboy magazine’s misogynist hate-rape article against conservative women. He objected to the hate piece and was punished for his efforts to report the news.
It appears that AOL has business ties with Playboy and doesn’t want to embarrass Hugh Hefner’s aging empire more than it has already embarrassed itself.
To protect Playboy from additional, ever-growing public outcry, it appears that AOL decided to heavy-handedly implement total censorship of the story, hoping the PR nightmare would just blow over and they could pretend the degrading hate-rape article against conservative women never existed. Tommy Christopher was a maverick in the classic journalist sense, and royally ticked AOL off when he wouldn’t let the hate-rape story die.
The irony is that, if it is indeed true that AOL fired Christopher over the hate-rape debacle, the story is growing exponentially out here in the blogosphere, with or without AOL’s participation in reporting it. Tommy Christopher did the right thing; the AOL news organization did NOT.
Stay (cl)assy, AOL. Here’s a napkin to wipe that egg off your face…
NewsBusters: Liberal Writer Fired By AOL News For Reporting Vile Playboy List
By Stephen Gutowski | June 4, 2009AOL News has been bending over backwards lately to make sure that they do not cover the controversy surrounding Playboy.com writer Guy Cimbalo’s vile attack on conservative women. AOL News has taken some drastic steps to censor any mention, let alone criticism, of Playboy’s screed. They have deleted posts about the article, banned contributors from mentioning it, and even fired one of their liberal writers over it.
The fact that banning reporters from, well, reporting is so contrary to the purpose of a news organization it really is puzzling. It seems to be in direct contrast to their commitment to “traditional journalistic values”.
The evidence is stacking up quite high that AOL News fired liberal writer Tommy Christopher today due to his repeated attempts to get coverage of the Playboy attack list on AOL’s Politics Daily. Christopher had first attempted to post this criticism of Playboy’s sick list the day it was published on their website. However, he was surprised to find that shortly after putting his article on Politics Daily it was deleted by an editor.
His surprise stemmed from the fact that in his two years of writing for the site not one other post had ever been deleted by an editor.
Another former Politics Daily writer I spoke with, Caleb Howe, confirmed that fact. And while Tommy Christopher released a statement to NewsBusters criticizing AOL’s decision to let him go Caleb Howe went further than Tommy in his opinion of AOL’s motives.
“His coverage of the Playboy “hate f***” list must have had a lot to do with Tommy being fired, if not everything to do with it” Howe told NewsBusters. “It would be absurd to think the timing is coincidental” referring to the fact that Christopher was fired three days after his original Playboy story and only hours after pitching a new story on the same topic. Further allegations of AOL censoring coverage of the Playboy controversy came to light when Christopher and Howe appeared on Media Lizzy’s show this afternoon.
At the 74:50 mark of the show Media Lizzy (Elizabeth Blackney) claimed that her editor, Michael Kraskin, sent her an email regarding a question she submitted for the AOL Hot Seat Poll. Her original question was going to be “does Playboy empower or exploit women”. In his response email Media Lizzy claimed that Kraskin asked for a different question and said “This Playboy story is something we have internally decided not to address”.
Tommy Christopher claimed on the show that AOL told him the story was pulled because the Playboy story was too profane. However, Christopher’s story censored out all of the profanity and given Media Lizzy’s claims it seems that no mention of the Playboy story would be acceptable to AOL. Plus there is a post by Christopher that has been on AOL’s Politics Daily (until recently called Political Machine) for nearly a year with several uncensored curse words and was not mentioned as a problem by anyone NewsBusters contacted.
NewsBusters contacted Politics Daily’s editor in chief, Melinda Henneberger who both deleted Tommy Christopher’s original story and fired him, for comment but she never returned our email.
As Christopher notes in the statement he released to NewsBusters he was a productive and successful writer for AOL. He is a well respected, widely read, and widely linked writer. His stories and opinions have been featured on Bill O’Reilly, Hot Air, Red State, The College Politico, The Daily Kos, The Huffington Post, and even NewsBusters. It seems highly unlikely that AOL fired him for lack of performance and it is important to note that nobody has claimed that as of now.
With all of this it seems that coincidental timing is an extremely hard sell for why Tommy Christopher was fired by AOL News today. It appears that Christopher was intent on covering a story which he found to be particularly important but that AOL News had “internally decided” was off limits.
Has the fact that AOL’s parent company, Time Warner, has a business relationship with Playboy may have affected their editorial decisions? After all, Time Warner is a major national distributor of Playboy TV through their cable company.
Stand strong, Tommy. You did the right thing for the right reasons. Being fired is no picnic, but this is a badge of honor you now wear in your journalistic efforts to be fair and inform the public of the hate lodged against conservative women. AOL is the Nazi in this scenario.
Additional posts and articles:
YID With LID: AOL Fires Writer Tommy Christopher For Objecting to Playboy’s Call to Rape Ten Women
Submitted to a Candid World: AOL Fires Tommy Christopher; Why?
Hot Air: Did AOL fire Tommy Christopher for criticizing Playboy? and It’s official: Playboy is a hate site; Update: Playboy pulled it and Bonnie Erbe: That Playboy “hate f***” piece was wrong but Malkin sort of deserved it and Video: Megyn Kelly unloads on Playboy
The New Agenda: Playboy: Now With More Misogyny!
Caleb’s Blog, RedState: The Playboy Article (NSFW) (preserved screenshots of Playboy article before it was pulled | explicit language, X-rated warning)
NixGuy.com: AOL Playboy and Tommy Christopher Drama [UPDATE]
Political Vindication: Liberal Intolerance #128: Playboy’s Conservative Women Hate F#ck List
Michelle Malkin: Playboy “hatef**k” list fallout: AOL did what? and This is what feminism looks like and Another day, another hate wish and Moron of the day
Frugal Café Blog Zone: Bravo, Elisabeth… Elisabeth Hasselbeck Goes After Playboy for Disgusting ‘Hate-Rape of Top 10 Conservative Women’ Article (video) and No Hate Here at Playboy, Guys… Just Some Good Ol’, Fun-Lovin’ Power-Rape of Conservative Women
RedState: A Climate of Hate
The Activist Conservative: The Playboy Article (screen shots of the entire original article before it was pulled, X-rated language)
Sister Toldjah: Playboy “playfully” advocates rape of popular conservative women writers
Media Lizzy & Friends: Playboy Writer Guy Cimbalo Shares Top 10 Republican Women He’d like to Rape
Atlas Shrugs: Playboy Does Atlas: ‘Hate F**KS’ Women They Could Never Touch, Literally or Figuratively
Daily Dose: Playboy Officially Hates Women, Conservative or Otherwise
Cube: Playboy Finds Prose Offensive, Censors Itself
Fire Andrea Mitchell!: Conservative women they’d like to “hate-f**k” – now pulled from Playboy site
The Powers That Be: Playboy Gets Classy: ‘Top 10 Conservative Women We’d Like to Hate F*#k’
Ed Driscoll, PajamasMedia: Playboy: In Like Flynt
Pink Elephant Pundit: Playboy Publishes Rape Fantasy List
Macsmind: Playboy opens itself to legal action
Stop The ACLU: Playboy, That Magazine Of Free Expression, Goes Major Hater
Big Hollywood Exclusive: Prejean Attorney Strikes Back: Carrie Has Fulfilled her Pageant Obligations
NewsBusters: Kos Kids Back at it – Wishing Death upon Michelle Malkin
Garnette’s View: So, it is okay for Playboy to post about raping conservative women
The Cranky Conservative: The gutter just got lower
Don Surber: Lefty misogyny
William K. Wolfrum Chronicles: Playboy lowers itself to ranks of twisted fetish magazines
Vets On The Watch: Climate Of Liberal Hate
Right Wing News: Playboy’s Hit Piece On Conservative Women
Jezebel: Playboy On Conservative Women: “Castration Has Begun To Look Appealing”
Pundit & Pundette: Obama: no empathy for women?
About the author
Lost Playboy web post:
UNEDITED
http://www.redstate.com/absentee/2009/06/02/the-playboy-article-nsfw
I’m posting this filth to expose what the opposition does to conservative females in attempt to silence them. Stand up to the bullies!
I cannot believe this.
Another glowing example of the liberal media attempting to shut down any descent whatsoever. It means we have to double down to fight these attempts at bullying people into silence.
God, this makes me sick.
I totally agree with you, Roxie. Statists enjoy shaking things up to keep conservatives off balance. We need to figure out how to remain active, passionate, and objective without getting swallowed up in the crappy turmoil. A few lib sites have actually been critical of the outcry against the article (not against Tommy Christopher being fired, although he is a soft-core liberal… make he isn’t “liberal” enough for them to defend him being fired), that conservatives are being “overly sensitive” about this issue, that “being chosen” to be “hate-f**ked” is some kind of compliment. Maybe in Bizarro Pervert World it is… how warped is that? And so hateful of women and the women’s movement. They would like us to flip back to Square One. Stay “barefoot and pregnant” and if we express ideology that is opposite of theirs, heck, a little “hate-f**k” is what we “need” to start thinking right again. Deplorable.
Conservatives are on the right track by galvanizing at the grassroots level and being made aware of the tactics of left-wing extremists. We need to talk to each other, encourage each other, be supportive. We need to stay true to our objective: educate/inform those who are “on the fence” or are totally oblivious to what is going on and be sure to vote out the weasels in Congress in 2010.
What Would Our Founding Fathers Do?
By the way, for anyone who doesn’t know about Tommy’s webblog, here it is: http://tommychristopher.wordpress.com/
Oops sorry Vickie… closer look by me notes you already have a link to Tommy’s stie.
Sorry!
LOL, no worries, dear heart. I never know how many people actually read the links/sites I include. Maybe half, maybe less. So you including it again is positive reinforcement. More info is always a GOOD thing.
The term “hate f#$%” is broadly defined in the male lexicon (i.e. terms men use when women are not around) to describe a sexual act that is not related to rape. The main differences are that the act is always consensual and that it merely relates to having sex in a more intensely physical manner. Not all women are into this kind of fornication; however, most men have watched at least one porn video (it sells better) with the act, as fake as it may be.
Let us not overreact. It was simply a sloppy mistake and a break of the manly covenant of not using such terms in front of women.