Second Public Radio Freelancer Fired for OWS Support

A second public radio freelancer has lost her job for taking part in the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Caitlin Curran, who says she was fired from her freelance position with WNYC’s The Takeaway after her bosses learned of her participation in a demonstration in New York City, recounted her story in a first-person account for Gawker that was published Friday.

Curran’s version of events breaks down roughly like so: She attended the event more or less as a spectator, but when her boyfriend began to suffer from “sign-holding fatigue,” she briefly took over. A photo of her, sign in hand, quickly made the rounds on the Internet. Thinking she had a great story on her hands, she pitched a segment on her newfound notoriety to her producers, who were less than impressed with her journalistic chops and fired her, saying that she had “violated every ethic of journalism.”

(If you’re wondering, the quote on the sign she was holding is paraphrased from an article from The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf. You can read that here.)

The news of Curran’s firing comes one week after another public radio freelancer, Lisa Simeone, lost her gig with WAMU after her bosses discovered she had served as an occasional spokeswoman for one of the OWS offshoots in Washington, D.C.

Despite some initial confusion that crept its way into initial reports about both Simeone and Curran, neither worked directly for NPR. Simeone was fired by SoundPrint, an independent documentary show, albeit one that had adopted NPR’s code of ethics for its staff. Curran worked as a Web producer for The Takeaway, which is produced jointly by WYNC and Public Radio International.