Lisa Simeone, who worked as a freelance broadcaster on two public radio shows, has been fired from one of them after NPR questioned her involvement as a spokeswoman for the Occupy DC protests.
The Associated Press reports that Simeone confirmed she was fired from the documentary show "Soundprint," on Wednesday "in a phone call during which NPR's code of ethics was read to her."
The show is not produced by NPR, but the other show that Simeon Hosts, "World of Opera," is produced by WDAV and distributed by NPR.
An NPR spokeswoman sent out a memo to staff yesterday saying: "We're in conversations with WDAV about how they intend to handle this. We of course take this issue very seriously."
Simeone gave a defiant interview to the Baltimore Sun's David Zurawik, saying, ""I'm not an NPR employee… I'm a freelancer. NPR doesn't pay me. I'm also not a news reporter. I don't cover politics. I've never brought a whiff of my political activities into the work I've done for NPR World of Opera. What is NPR afraid I'll do -- insert a seditious comment into a synopsis of Madame Butterfly?"
Romenesko has a good breakdown of how the story made its way into the media bloodstream – broken by Roll Call, picked up by the Daily Caller and then by Fox News.
The whole thing, right down to the firing-by-phone-after-pickup-from-Fox, has echoes of the Juan Williams debacle and is likely to worsen public radio's political woes, even if Simeone was not an NPR employee.
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