TV Station Employee Fired for Labeling Tom Brady a ‘Known Cheater’

Some people are prone to speaking ill of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. This isn’t news. It’s just a fact of life. But when it’s your job to be an objective journalist—or at least when your boss has a stick up their ass—that business might come back to bite you.

Such was the case after a local TV station employee decided to shoot their shot on the chyron during some Super Bowl LIII coverage. A CBS affiliate in Pittsburgh—home to the sort of rival Steelers—ran an image of Brady on Monday’s 4 o’clock news with a tidy little label below of “Known Cheater,” and the higher-ups were none too pleased.

If you run a local TV station and see that something like this has gone viral, there are two ways you can approach it: 1. Just let it slide—maybe with a slap of the wrist—and soak up the attention. Or: 2. Get mad and hand the person a pink slip. Seems like KDKA went for the latter, as Sports Illustrated reported that the station let go of the employee who did it.

From SI:

“While fans are entitled to have personal opinions, we have a journalistic responsibility to provide unbiased reporting,” KDKA said in a statement to SI.com. “The graphic that appeared Monday violated our news standards. The individual who created the graphic no longer works for KDKA-TV.”

Deep eye roll.