The Thread For 5/15/14: Jillted

Focus: Jill Abramson's Firing Looks Worse When The Times Advocated For Equal Pay in the Past 

Photo from MSNBC 

It's not about whether Jill Abramson was a "pushy" boss or someone who helped their friend steal back her dog, or whatever way that funny, irrelevant story turned out to be. 

Jill Abramson's forced egress out of the New York Times was yet the latest, prominent example of the professional inequality still prevalent in the female salary work place.

How dare Abramson asked for the same pay as her male predecessor Bill Keller? That what was clearly expressed in the thoughts of Arthur Sulzberger, the paper's publisher and proud member of the powerful white male union still presiding over our gender pay gap ethos.

You can understand if the pension wasn't the same as Keller had, as the size of many workers' pensions (or if they even qualify for a pension in the first place) is dependent upon years spent at a profession. But for a high profile place and journalism institution like the Times to not give the identical salary to Abramson that Keller guaranteed really is so embarrassing, especially when they have done stories throughout the years on equal pay. Highlighting the lovely hypocrisy they showed is just too easy to do.

In fact, it hasn't been just daily articles reports like on the process of the Lilly Ledbetter Act being signed five years that Times has, but also the number of opinion pieces pushing for equal pay. Look at how much they slammed Mitt Romney and his campaign's constant tepid response on the matter. Clearly that fact was lost on Sulzberger and anyone else who was fully cognizant of this nonsensical financial ploy.

And it further shows once again that our journalistic institutions fail to practice what they certainly love to preach.