Charles Perez, the WPLG anchor who has filed a discrimination suit against the South Florida ABC affiliate, wrote in a Sunday column in The Daily Beast that the station believed "my profile as a gay man, especially if I were to have kids and, God
forbid, get married, would render me less promotable and less
advertiser-friendly."
On August 6, Perez was fired. Station management says it was reacting to false allegations being made against it by Perez in a discrimination suit. In defending itself, WPLG has relied upon another gay staff member, its vice president and news director, Bill Pohovey, who recently released a statement you can read in full here at Random Pixels.
Perez's Daily Beast column is, at points, shrill and
self-serving. He quotes a pep talk he got from his dentist, then
grabs quotes from Barack Obama and Dr. Martin Luther King. He even
reaches back to his time at another station during the search for WMDs
to make a comment about what's wrong with the modern media.
But in the same column, Perez concedes that the forces of discrimination
he felt at the station were very subtle, which means that in court, his
case will have to be very subtle. That will put it at odds with the
extremely unsubtle grandstanding he's doing right now, which makes it
hard to believe that Perez truly believes in the bigger cause (whether
that's a better media or a less prejudiced workplace) so much as for
being perceived as a hero turned martyr.
