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Have Keith Olbermann's rights been infringed upon by his firing?

Have Olbermann's rights to free speech been infringed?

  • Yes, his firing restricts his right to free speech!

    Votes: 1 6.7%

  • No, he still has the right to free speech!

    Votes: 14 93.3%
  • Total voters
    15
Whovian

Whovian

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A few posters in the Olbermann threads have implied heavily that KO has had his rights to free speech infringed upon by his firing. I thought it might be interesting to see who agrees with those posters.
 
There's a difference between the right to speak and the right to be listened to.
 
MSNBC isn't obliged to give him (or anyone else) a soapbox to stand on. With that said, has it even been confirmed that his firing was due to anything in particular that he said? As far as I can tell, his ouster had nothing to do with his views on any issues and everything to do with his abrasive personality.
 
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Viktyr Korimir said:
There's a difference between the right to speak and the right to be listened to.
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No vote.
Has he really been fired?...
I might pull a Trump and fire them all.....
With rights come responsibilities, if a man throws out his responsibilities, then he deserves to lose these rights. This needs to be explained to all men every day of their lives. Maybe this needs to be added to the Amendments for those who try to literally understand things.
 
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His right to free speech has not been infringed because the government did not remove him from his position.
 
Olbermann has a right to free speech. He does not have a right to a job. People get fired or laid off from their jobs all the time. Just deal with it.
 
He had and still has a right to free speech, he just has no right to use MSNBC as a forum for his speech. Nothing is stopping him from speaking out right now and he's doing just that.
 
Whovian said:
A few posters in the Olbermann threads have implied heavily that KO has had his rights to free speech infringed upon by his firing. I thought it might be interesting to see who agrees with those posters.
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Of course they haven't. If the government had forced him off the air, yeah then his free speech right would have been violated. The 1st amendment is a Constitutional guarantee that the government can't shut the people up. This right is not absolute however, the courts have ruled that in certain cases they can to precisely that.
 
Whovian said:
A few posters in the Olbermann threads have implied heavily that KO has had his rights to free speech infringed upon by his firing. I thought it might be interesting to see who agrees with those posters.
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Except he wasn't fired. He reached the end of his contract and it wasn't renewed. That isn't the same as firing.
 
Hoplite said:
Except he wasn't fired. He reached the end of his contract and it wasn't renewed. That isn't the same as firing.
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I don't believe he was fired. He had 2 years left on his contract for which he negotiated a settlement which was reached shortly before his show on Friday. I think he saw the handwriting on the wall and decided to leave. Word is that MSNBC wanted to approve his "special comments" and he was unwilling to allow that to happen.
 
pbrauer said:
I don't believe he was fired. He had 2 years left on his contract for which he negotiated a settlement which was reached shortly before his show on Friday. I think he saw the handwriting on the wall and decided to leave. Word is that MSNBC wanted to approve his "special comments" and he was unwilling to allow that to happen.
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Interesting... word is, if you GOOGLE 'olbermann fired' you get over 2 million hits... while 'olbermann negotiates dea'l gets 353,000.
 
pbrauer said:
I don't believe he was fired. He had 2 years left on his contract for which he negotiated a settlement which was reached shortly before his show on Friday. I think he saw the handwriting on the wall and decided to leave. Word is that MSNBC wanted to approve his "special comments" and he was unwilling to allow that to happen.
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IIRC, I read that his contract was up and MSNBC had decided not to renew it. I very well could be wrong.
 
I don't think it has been established that he was fired. Even if he was, they didn't take away any of his free speech rights. He is still free to speak as much as he pleases, he just can't use MSNBC's equipment to do it.

Some have implied that since a clause in the contract exists to prevents him from going to another TV network for a specified amount of time, somehow this is restricting his rights. Again simply untrue. These clauses have a monetary amount attached to them, so he is being paid for that no compete clause. Also he signed the contract with that clause in it.

At their very core our rights a a guarantee of freedom from the government's interference. It is extremely hard for individuals (or companies) to infringe on a person's speech freedoms.

The general lack of understanding of our rights in this country disturbs me.
 
Whovian said:
Interesting... word is, if you GOOGLE 'olbermann fired' you get over 2 million hits... while 'olbermann negotiates dea'l gets 353,000.
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That is really interesting... when I Google 'whovian stupid' I get 79,700 hits... When I Google 'whovian smart' I get only 41,500 hits. ;)
 
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