Sunday, January 05, 2014
Sacking of firearms columnist by publication raises questions about "conflict of interest" in workplace after consumers make "threats"
The front page story “Banished for questioning the
gospel of guns” in the New York Times Sunday, by Ravi Somaiya, link here certainly has disturbing implications for the
idea of personal free speech and the workplace and the idea that it can cause a
“conflict of interests”.
Dick Metcalf can no longer write for “Guns &
Ammo” after he wrote a column called “Let’s talk limits”, arguing for some
moderate gun control regulation. “Constitutional
rights have always been regulated,” Metcalf wrote. Despite the public mood following Aurora,
Sandy Hook and other tragedies, the magazine got subscription cancellations,
threats, and dropping by sponsors, the latter as long as Metcalf was associated
with the magazine. So, he was “fired”. It’s not apparent if he was an employee or
syndicated columnist, but others seemed to perceive him as “working for” the
magazine, which may not have been correct.
I wondered if this circumstance had a parallel to my
own “conflict of interest” in the 1990’s when I was authoring my first “Do Ask,
Do Tell” book. I was working for a
relatively small life insurance company that specialized in sales to military
officers, when I decided to enter the debate on gays in the military after
President Clinton (with some clumsiness, in retrospect) tried to lift the ban –
leading to the long history of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. When the company was bought by a bigger one
with a broader base, I wound up transferring and moving to Minneapolis,
removing any potential conflict. Later, when my mother needed coronary bypass
surgery, I was pressured to consider coming back, which I did not do. It may sound far out, to wonder if it was
possible that my staying there could actually cause a loss of business, but the
idea is parallel. It is significant that
I did not make underwriting decisions about customers and did not have direct
reports.
It seems that people in many jobs have to dedicate
their entire social media and online presence to the political interests of
their own employers and not their own. I
just heard recently about a case where someone was told by an employer not to
reveal on social media that he or she worked for a particular merged company undergoing
possible anti-trust litigation.
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