FIRED TV ANCHOR SPEAKS OUT

A gay television news anchor in the US has claimed that he was fired because of his sexuality.

On 31 July, Charles Perez filed a discrimination lawsuit against the WPLG television station he worked for after he was demoted to a lesser timeslot because, Perez claims, his bosses were uncomfortable with his sexuality. He said that he was told that he was “lacking a masculine on-camera persona.”

Four days after Perez filed the sexual-orientation discrimination suit with Miami-Dade County’s Equal Opportunity Board he was fired by the station.

“I believe they sold me out as soon as my being gay became too widely known. It made them uncomfortable and made me, in their eyes, less advertiser-friendly,” wrote Perez in an article titled Why I Committed Career Suicide, published on The Daily Beast.

“I’ll probably never work in the news business again. Honestly, who’s going to hire a newsman, as good as he may be, who litigates against his employer? It’s not exactly a career builder,” he said.

Since he was let go, Perez has added a retaliation charge to the discrimination suit.

WPLG has denied that Perez was discriminated against and said that it will “bring the facts out in the appropriate legal forum.” The station has insisted that it had no choice but to fire him.