ABC Suspends Producer Over Bush-Bashing E-Mail

[kpete]

ABC Suspends Producer Over Bush-Bashing E-Mail

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 1, 2006; C01

ABC News suspended the executive producer of the weekend edition of "Good Morning America" yesterday over a pair of leaked e-mails in which he used inflammatory language to slam President Bush and Madeleine Albright.

John Green, whose unpaid suspension will last one month, apologized to the White House in a call to communications director Nicolle Wallace, while two ABC executives called the former secretary of state to apologize.

"No one is sorrier than John for the embarrassment that these albeit private e-mails caused to his colleagues and to the people who were the subjects of those comments," said ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider. "John would be the first to say this has been a real lesson to him. John is abjectly sorry for all the comments that have come to light, and that's appropriate."

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."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/31/AR2006033101725_pf.html

[Catherine Vincent]

1. This is such bullshit!

[IsItJustMe]

2. I'm suprised they didn't fire him like CBS got rid of Rather.

[Metta]

3. Intimidation pure and simple.

Meant to keep us quiet.

[liveoaktx]

4. So he couldn't express a PRIVATE opinion over a blackberry to

a colleague? Sheesh.

[NewJeffCT]

6. of course not

you're only unbiased if you're pro-Bush, remember?

[jbnow]

8. You're right.

Bet there would be no problem if he wrote "bush is a great president, hope he beats that flip flopping Kerry"

[otohara]

5. ABC Should Be Censured For Lying For Liars

in the White House....include NBC, CBS, CNN - NYT's, LA Times, on and on... They owe viewers and the American people a big fat apology.

[sproutster]

7. Oh. Mah. Gawd! WTF

Can't they even have the pretense of "expectation of privacy"

It was a private message - Ladies and Gentlemen, put on your no entry signs, we are about to encounter Freedom of Speech

[hopeisaplace]

9. Why is it...everyone has to apologize except the government?

what. a. joke.

[GrumpyGreg]

10. I put nothing in E-Mails that I wouldn't want the world to see.

People should smarten up!

[Catherine Vincent]

12. There's nothing wrong with the world seeing that Bush makes this guy sick.

It's not like he made a threat to him. This suspension is pathetic at best.

[Ian David]

11. Now we need to find PRO-BUSH emails from ABC that we can leak

Better still: Emails from ABC producers to their mistresses.