What's the frequency, Kenneth?
Just as Dan Rather was making his triumphant return to YouTube vlogging, now the lefty video spam channel who let him make videos is in new trouble.
A former reporter for YouTube-centric political media company the Young Turks has filed a racial discrimination claim against the progressive news outlet.
Andrew Jerell Jones, a black journalist whose work has appeared in the Guardian and the Intercept, alleges that Young Turks founder and CEO Cenk Uygur told him complaining about racial biases within the company was a “fireable offense” and that he should “shut the fuck up and deal.”
In a statement to BuzzFeed News, Uygur said, “The quotes attributed to me in the workplace are completely false."
In December, the Wrap uncovered old blog posts where Uygur wrote demeaning and sexist entries about women and dating. Uygur apologized and called his writings from the early 2000s “insensitive and ignorant.” The Wrap also discovered a 2004 blog post from Koller, where he describes seeing “po' black people just hanging out in the heat” on a road trip through Memphis. “I mean these negros were the real deal,” Koller wrote.
Just turn Dan Rather on the story. And he'll find some memos from 1878 typed in Microsoft Word completely exonerating Uygur. I have a counterproposal. Dan Rather should team up with Keith Olberman to furiously lecture America in YouTube videos that exist only to push 15 second commercials for Amazon Show.
But it would be a shame if Dan Rather's new media home folded just as he was about to make his triumphant return to journalism as a laughingstock.