Madonna Chism Pinkard, a news station employee, has been terminated over a Facebook post that promoted “Straight Pride” during June’s Pride Month.
Pinkard, a community relations director in Youngstown, Ohio, posted the bulletin on her personal Facebook page where she identifies as “Madonna Jean,” and her profile image includes the WFMJ logo.
The post, that has now been removed, depicted a meme of a newlywed man and a woman and read, “Celebrate Straight Pride,” “It’s natural, It has worked for thousands of years,” “And you can make babies!”
Reports indicate that Pinkard quickly removed the post, while apologizing for offending others.
However on June 6, WFMJ posted their own announcement on Facebook. “Dear WFMJ Viewers, Early this morning WFMJ management was made aware of an unauthorized social media post by a WFMJ employee. That post has since been removed. WFMJ is conducting an investigation into the unauthorized post. We are concerned by this incident and are moving forward with a thorough investigation.”
Then, on June 11, the station confirmed that they had fired the employee for the post, citing that she had crossed the line of topics that should be discussed in a respectful manner.
