Highlander said:
How could he apologize for something he said and meant, that was his freedom to say, that men died so he could say it, no matter how much it antagonizes people.
Insincerely, I suppose. People make insincere apologies all the time to get out of trouble. Heck, I'm sure Sportsnet would have even been ok if he'd given one of those lame "I'm sorry if anyone was offended by what I said, that wasn't my intent" non-apologies.
Point being that it wasn't really violating some sort of ethical norm that ultimately cost Cherry his job, it's that when his employer was getting the crap kicked out of them in the national and even international media, he put his own pride before giving them some cover.
Highlander said:
The real fault is Sportsnet knows Don was a very loose cannon, to say the least. Why he didn't have a censor working with him on each and every episode is a major fault of a huge conglomerate network of companies. Someone at Sportnet F--ked up as well and they should also take responsibility for letting a known "Howard Beale" rant on National TV every week. As a matter of fact as a one of the angry masses, I demand that Sportsnet fires someone for allowing Don not to be censored........see how it works???
I do see how it works. For anyone out there who doesn't, let me break it down for you. Highlander here is making a demand of a big private media company that doesn't really make sense(how do you censor a live show for content?). Regardless of it making sense though, Highlander is just one person and as a result the big private media company almost certainly won't listen to them.
This is in contrast to what we've seen the last few days where lots and lots and lots of people have expressed an opinion that does make sense. Sportsnet, a private media company looking for as broad an audience as possible, did ultimately decide that their interests were better served moving on from Cherry.
(Although, let's be fair, Coach's Corner was going to end in the fairly near future no matter what. This really just accelerated things)
This is the way private media companies work now. Of course, this is the way private media companies have always worked. I couldn't have gone on TV in the 60's and used my job on a private broadcast to loudly argue for gay marriage. Famously, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour got cancelled because they wanted Pete Seeger on their show to sing "The Ballad of the Big Muddy" because the Network thought the lyrics could possibly be interpreted as critical of the war in Vietnam and they didn't want to offend people who supported the war. So it's not like some sort of norm towards absolute freedom of expression has changed, all that's changed is which opinions offend a lot of people.
So nothing's actually changed in terms of freedom of expression. In fact, what with cable channels and loosening broadcast standards we're almost certainly more free to express whatever opinions we want on TV. Problem is, the private media companies who run TV channels are also free to not let us on the air if they're paying the bills.
And that's really the rub here. It used to be a pretty conservative position to say that a private company like Sportsnet got to decide what happened on their channel on the basis of their own private interest. That's what happened here. Sportsnet looked at Cherry, weighed the customers he brought in(mostly older) vs. the customers he could cost them
(young, probably more diverse), and decided to move on. Right or wrong in a business sense? Not my bailiwick. But I know Sportsnet is getting killed on the NHL deal and antagonizing younger viewers is the last thing they need.
So what's the problem? Private company does something, almost certainly to protect profits. That's Conservative with a capital C, no?
Well, there are a lot of people out there right now who realize that the ground underneath their feet are shifting. That the institutions that used to protect them and their ideas are now responding to the interests and desires of other people. More people, in fact. Because that's how the marketplace works. Those people are angry and confused. Didn't private industry used to reflect my views? Didn't I used to be in the majority? Those people don't like their views being isolated, their views being the ones that get TV shows cancelled. Happy enough for years to inflict it on others, bitter and loud when they get a taste.
And disturbingly, some of them have turned to ideas that aren't liberal or conservative. Private Companies aren't allowed to censor their employees, they say, broadcast and tech companies should be forced to allow me or my proxies to say whatever I want on their platform regardless of how it affects them.
There's a word for views like that. Totalitarian. And the rise of those views, well, that bothers me. Because if we're going to talk about what our veterans fought and died for, stopping the spread of that sort of ideology is pretty near the top of the list.