CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Three reporters from a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper in West Virginia say they’ve been fired after publicly criticizing an interview conducted by their company president with a former coal executive who was convicted of a security violation in reference to the worst U.S. mine disaster in a long time.
Charleston Gazette-Mail reporters Caity Coyne, Lacie Pierson and Ryan Quinn said Tuesday that they were fired attributable to their comments on Twitter in regards to the video interview, now faraway from the paper’s website, with former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship.
Quinn said no specific policy was cited. “The one who fired me said it was because I had publicly hurt the corporate on social media,” he said.
Pierson said she was told “it was insubordination that we committed on social media” and “that was something they couldn’t accept.”
In separate interviews, the three reporters said they didn’t receive invitations to a staff meeting with other reporters and editors Monday, several days after the interview was posted. As a substitute, they said they were diverted to an upstairs conference room, where they were fired one-by-one behind closed doors.
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HD Media President Doug Skaff, who hosted the interview with Blankenship, didn’t return a telephone message or an email in search of comment Tuesday.
The “Outside The Echo Chamber” feature is posted frequently on the Gazette-Mail’s website and hosted by Skaff, who is also a Democratic member of the state House of Delegates and the chamber’s minority leader.
Last week the newspaper posted the interview with Blankenship, whose former company owned the Upper Big Branch mine where a 2010 explosion killed 29 men in southern West Virginia. Blankenship was convicted in 2015 of a misdemeanor for conspiring to violate mine safety laws and was sentenced to 1 12 months in federal prison.
Within the interview, Skaff is joined by a former television reporter in asking Blankenship in regards to the Republican-dominated legislature, the coal industry, the mine explosion and the 2018 and 2024 elections.
In response to an issue in regards to the dwindling coal industry, Blankenship calls climate change “an absolute hoax.” The comment goes unrebutted, despite the fact that scientists say their confidence within the proven fact that global temperatures are rising and that the rise is attributable to human activity is comparable to the scientific certainty that cigarette smoking is deadly.
Blankenship is also asked to advertise his 2020 book in regards to the mine disaster, by which he repeats his claims of innocence and blames the administration of then-President Barack Obama.
Investigations found that worn and broken cutting equipment created a spark that ignited accumulations of coal dust and methane gas. Broken and clogged water sprayers allowed what must have been a minor flare-up to change into an inferno.
In concluding the interview, Skaff tells Blankenship: “Thanks for what you probably did for the community down there. I do know your heart’s in the suitable place. And you must see southern West Virginia built back to the very best that they’ll.”
It’s unclear why the interview was faraway from the web site.
Quinn first fired out a series of tweets Dec. 8 that Pierson and Coyne supported in protest of giving Blankenship a podium without the prospect for journalists to ask follow-up questions.
“Today I’m announcing my candidacy for any job on the planet,” Pierson, the newspaper’s Statehouse and politics reporter, wrote on Twitter after her firing. “I’m joining Caity and Ryan as having spoken our principles and living to inform the story after being fired for our tweets.”
“We understand the necessity to draw eyes to the web site on the business end of stories,” Pierson also wrote, “but stunts like this erode the integrity and credibility of the entire Gazette-Mail.
“This selection mostly hurts staff writers, who had no say on this decision, or a number of decisions for that matter.”
In April 2017, then-Gazette-Mail reporter Eric Eyre won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting on the opioid crisis. HD Media bought the paper at a bankruptcy auction in 2018, and Eyre now not works there.
Along with the opioid crisis, the Gazette-Mail extensively covered the mine explosion, its aftermath and the federal government’s prosecution of Blankenship.
“I don’t have the words for the way screwed up that is,” Coyne, the paper’s now-former health reporter, said of the interview. “I’ve met families whose family members died in UBB. I’ve watched them cry as they remember their relatives and their fight for answers after the disaster. Who cares where Blankenship’s heart lies. What a slap within the face to them.”
Coyne had previously announced she was leaving the paper for a recent job in January.
Quinn, who was the newspaper’s education reporter, had told management last month that he was planning to depart. As a substitute, he said, he was offered a raise to be an investigative reporter.
Then the Blankenship interview happened.
“I’m all for giving everyone a say etc. but there was no news value to this,” Quinn wrote. “Embarrassing.”
Kayla Young, one other Democrat within the state House of Delegates, said Tuesday on Twitter that she doesn’t support giving Blankenship a probability to air his opinions. She also said there’s a conflict of interest for Skaff hosting a news media show and that she has spoken to him about her feelings.
“Something’s got to present,” Young said. “We as a community are worse off to lose reporters who sincerely care about their work and we can be less informed consequently.”
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