ABC News: One More Reason Not to Watch

The Washington Post is reporting that ABC News producer John Green will serve a one month unpaid suspension following the Drudge Report's publication of a private email he wrote to a colleague. Eager to shame Green, fellow employees allegedly leaked the email to Drudge.

The language he used is hardly incendiary. "In one of the e-mails, written during the first presidential debate in 2004 and leaked to the Drudge Report, Green wrote to a colleague on his BlackBerry: "Are you watching this? Bush makes me sick. If he uses the 'mixed messages' line one more time, I'm going to puke.""

Between you and me, I disagree entirely with what Green wrote. But since when is a private email that is intended to remain between two co-workers fair game to be used in an unscrupulous attempt to pass someone on the corporate news ladder? Last I knew the 1st Amendment guarantees Green to say any stupid thing he wants.

ABC News jumped right in line with the other news outlets that proclaimed a Dutch cartoonist's right to publish caricatures of Mohammed just a couple months back. They were all for free speech then. Apparently they don't extend the same courtesy to their own.

Again, I don't agree with Green, but I do support his right to say it. This is just one more example of why network news has become nitwit news.