Mississippi Public Broadcasting Fires Reporter for leaking Fresh Air memo

There's one more voice that's off the air of Mississippi Public Broadcasting following the state network's cancellation of Fresh Air. Carl Gibson, whose first job out of journalism school was covering the state capitol for MPB, was fired on July 16 for leaking an internal memo about the state network's decision to drop the NPR-distributed show.

Gibson was just returning from an assignment covering the Gulf Coast oil spill, he said, when controversy over MPB's cancellation erupted over the blogosphere on July 15. Friends at the Jackson Free Press, the state's only alternative newspaper, approached Gibson as a source, and he wanted to help them get the story straight. Leaking the memo was a violation of MPB policy, Gibson acknowledged, but he mostly regrets sending it from his office email account, which was traceable. "I was not the only one leaking emails; I was the only one that got caught." He believes that, by canceling Fresh Air, MPB Executive Director Judith Lewis violated another important policy: MPB's commitment not to censor or edit programs for broadcast "solely out of fear of complaint."