Fired: Wore Wrong Hat, Tweeted Wrong Tweet, Misused Facebook

At a recent Arkansas Razorbacks football press conference held by head coach Bobby Petrino, a radio reporter with KAKS, a Fayetteville, Arkansas, radio station billing itself as Hog Sports Radio, wore a Florida Gators hat. She asked Coach Petrino a question. He answered and then said, “And that will be the last question I answer with that hat on.” Two days later, the reporter was fired (here and here).

The radio station says that the reporter wasn’t fired for wearing the hat — at least, that wasn’t the only reason. The reporter, a Florida graduate, had also made known her allegiance to the Gators by her use of Twitter and  Facebook. Coach Petrino denies that he called for her head because of the hat. The reporter said she grabbed the hat without thinking because it was raining outside. Uh huh.

If a reporter works for an organization that claims to be the radio station for the football team of (fill in the name of the school), it’s perfectly reasonable for the station to require its employees not to do anything that would contradict the station’s loyalty to the team. The Pepsi sales representative who wears a Coke hat to visit customers won’t have a job very long. This incident also demonstrates that social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) can rightfully lead to an employee’s discharge.

Football in the Southeastern Conference (of which Florida and Arkansas are members) is a blood sport. If you work for an organization that actively supports a particular team, you can’t openly show support for another team. If the press conference had been held in Gainesville, Florida, and a Gator Radio sports reporter had worn an Arkansas hat, it’s unlikely that the reporter would have been fired. She would have already been chased out of town.