“I hope I get COVID19 and die”

@MinifigNewsguy on Twitter early March 2020

Most real-world stations wouldn’t fire someone like this. But this is how I got to Digital 1 News in between BCOP-TV. But the Channel 6 News management really, has high standards, and what many in the real-world industry would consider to be just a one-off crazy tweet, they consider to be insulting. As a result I had been immediately dismissed from the station in the midst of COVID19.

What I think got the management freaking out, was earlier in March, 2 BCOP-TV staff, an ENG photog and a reporter had been threatened by a minifigure who claimed to have COVID and then threatened to spread it to them because they felt they were being harassed by the reporters. This meant two reporters would be out of commission for at least 10 days leaving an already tight newsroom to be shorter staffed.

In a 2018 rebuild to the newsroom (that was already 2 years old from construction) they made the newsroom basically for anyone in studio to work in the building, and anyone whose out on the field to work solely out in the field so during COVID it wasn’t that much different, making the station spared from further logistical disasters. Also the station had moved to IP (the Internet Protocol) for live shots, using an in house 4G network around the Capital region so for anyone with a Sophos VPN client, they could dial-into the building and act as if they were at the station with full resources on a regular computer (because all the heavy lifting was done on the station’s servers.)

But as a result I had to eat my tweet and the station didn’t hire me back behind the scenes until earlier in 2021. But as of today, I am leaving the station on mutual terms. More on this tomorrow.