Fårfig!™

So, this is how it is. This carefully crafted language is the kind of lawyerly deception we expect from those with no moral guiding star. (FWIW … @theblaze CEO is a lawyer.) At its very heart though, the post I’m responding to is a calculated deception. I have never asked for or expected any of my work for The Blaze to be exempt from editorial review. NEVER. NOT ONCE. In fact, my last piece written for The Blaze, with @hannereports, was subjected to eleven days of review from filing to publication. It went through rigorous editorial and legal review. After it was published by the editor in chief, it was almost immediately taken off the front page and buried behind the paywall … with “comments” turned off. Our last several articles have been subjected to deliberate in-house reach suppression and no promotion on social media or from BlazeTV hosts. So fearful Blaze executives have become that our work elicits people to think about and/or speak of that name which should not be uttered. That’s the regime we’ve been subjected to since our November 8 story revealing the identity of the J6 pipe bomber, after which I was immediately forbidden to do any interviews, on ANY topic, even on @BlazeTV programs. Even about articles and subject matter unrelated to that name which should not be uttered, or that had cleared editorial review. This deception is nuanced. They will now respond and contend that all my speech is subject to editorial review. TV, podcasts, social media, and the Blaze website. But the lede, as most TL;DR people will read and understand it, is that I no longer wanted to have my work subject to rigorous editorial and legal review. I categorically reject false that assertion. Even our November 8 article — ultimately retracted by The Blaze — went through 4-5 different editors, legal, and executive suite review before its publication. Joe and I did our jobs, and THEY ALL signed off on the story. They could have killed it before publication. They’ve spiked stories of ours before and since November 8. It happens. I eventually reached my moral, spiritual, emotional, psychological, and even physical end to accepting the censorship about a particularly “difficult subject.” In fact, in my final conference call with attorneys and other Blaze leadership, the company’s in-house counsel instructed me to limit my social media use to only “posting about your children and butterflies.” That was neither the beginning of the end, or the final straw, but from that point forward it only required some unknown future trigger to push me past my limit of being able to refrain from telling the whole truth about the January 6 pipe bomber. Truths and a “difficult subject” The Blaze does in fact fear covering. Last week there was such a trigger. The final straw. I then informed my editor in chief that I could no longer work under “the post November 8 censorship regime.” I NEVER said I wanted my work exempt from editorial review. We simply reached cross purposes in our employee/employer relationship. No biggie. It happens. But I’ll not allow that public misrepresentation from Blaze management to go unchallenged. FWIW … The old motto for The Blaze used to be, “The Truth Lives Here.” I’ll let you be the judge of that.