Ex-Fox News Employee Commits Suicide Outside of News Corp. Headquarters

[Newsjock]

Source: Gawker

A man who reportedly worked for a Fox affiliate in Austin, Texas, killed himself this morning in front of Manhattan's News Corporation building, which contains the Fox News headquarters.

A law enforcement official told the Wall Street Journal that Phillip Perea shot himself in the chest around 9 a.m. after he handed out fliers about how Fox News "ended (his) career."

... Just hours before committing suicide, Perea tweeted a link to to a YouTube series he'd apparently created called "The American Workplace Bully: How FOX News Ended My Career."

Read more: http://newsfeed.gawker.com/ex-fox-news-employee-commits-suicide-outside-of-news-co-1681793133

[Fred Sanders]

1. Wow. Fox has a lot of blood on its hands, a lot of things Fox deserves to die for. Figuratively.

Phillip Perea, brave man and my new media lie fighting hero, made the error of standing by basic journalistics principals at Fox unaware that is the last thing Fox wants.

Rest in peace.

Chapter 7 is the video Phillip Perea publish today, January 26, 2015.

[jmondine]

41. "Figuratively"? Don't you know that corporations are people?

And therefore can be incarcerated and given the death pen... oh.

[shenmue]

2. ...

Very sad.

[Iliyah]

22. R.I.P.

fake news will vilify him and blame it on liberal media.

[Enthusiast]

23. Very likely.

[Fred Sanders]

29. Not if you have seen all Phil's side videos. Give this story some time, Phil would have wanted that

[niyad]

3. how very sad. even worse, faux isn't going to give a damn.

[Fred Sanders]

4. His takedown of how Fox manipulated the news to favor the Wingnut police chief is devastating.

[Baitball Blogger]

5. If only we could reach those that are salvageable before it gets this far.

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. Bless you for that thought....

A very nice thing to hear this am.

[calimary]

25. Yeah, NO KIDDING!!!

So sad.

[lunasun]

33. +1

[COLGATE4]

6. A very disturbed individual. nt

[srican69]

9. Agreed ..there are are all sorts of bosses ( including assholes) .. but managing conflicts

is a core skill that each of us should have ..


the emphasis should always be on de-escalation .. unless you are ABSOLUTELY sure that you have backing from the right places.

Bottom line: Don't show up at gun fight with a pocket knife. And if you can - don't get into a fight.

[Xyzse]

8. I will have to check this out later.

Thanks for the link.

[Fred Sanders]

10. Bottom line. Fox 7 Austin got a call from Roger Ailes, New York, to fire the liberal mole in their midst.....

because Perea ran a FB post in February, 2014 about Austin police chief Acevedo, a known radical right winger police chief of the usual mold, putting Acevedo in percieved bad light. In fact Acevedo seemed enraged by the publicity surrounding his unhinged news conference in the wake of a local media story about the arrest of a jogger.

Complains were made to higher ups, Acevedo is well known to Roger Ailes and his media tool.

The police chief of Austin Acevedo then threatened to cut off access to Fox 7 (side bar needed for that one), because of the perceived "unflattering" nature of the FB posting Perea posted in February, 2014 - posted after a ranting press conference given by the police chief Acevedo regarding the brutal arrest of a jogger captured on video, which ranting then became a news item in itself.

The response was to fire Perea in May, as recorded in this first video..a suicide note, part 1.

[Enthusiast]

24. They behave like Nazis.

[samsingh]

11. poor man

[SeattleVet]

12. This guy was definitely disturbed.

See the *rest* of his videos on his YouTube channel. The few I watched didn't show him to be the most stable person.

https://www.youtube.com/user/AvidFCPro/videos

His final video was put up shortly before he killed himself. I can possibly see why some of his coworkers feared him; this video shows a sort of 'persecuted messiah' thing going on.

[Fred Sanders]

13. Wrong..you do not see the message at all.

"Righteous Cause Demands A Martyr"

Phillip Perea

[joeglow3]

35. I don't know

I watched the first 10 minutes of the first video and the guy seems to have some issues.

[SeattleVet]

39. I heard that part too...

but did you listen all the way to the end of his final video? At around 6:44 he talks about 'the simple reason why I was crucified'. He's also demanding 'penance' from Faux.

While Faux is a reprehensible operation from top to bottom, this guy definitely had some serious issues. Who the fuck does a 6-month long, 35-video suicide declaration?

[Fred Sanders]

42. The videos were made over the course of a year, there is a short final suicide video..so....

why the anger? Is there a good way to do a suicide, maybe a briefer message or a time limit?

[DebJ]

53. So it would be great if you would reveal this mystery of

"the simple reason why I was crucified'. i don't have 15 hours to get to that point. Maybe i'll check out the final video and go to that spot.
But why if you have read it, you wouldn't simply say what it is, I don't know.

[Fred Sanders]

16. #We'rewithPhil

[DebJ]

14. Can someone clairfy something for me?

That was a very long video; I guess my attention waned.

It seems to me the real issue that Fox had was that copy was written by someone who didn't work at Fox,
and this man is being held responsible for submitting that copy (I would guess submitting it as his own work).

What was this unfortunate employee's response to that? Was he saying it was his boss who submitted
that copy, and not him? I just didn't get a clear picture of that somehow.

[Fred Sanders]

17. You have to watch the entire video, it is a long.......suicide note is Part 7. Worth every second.

Last edited Mon Jan 26, 2015, 04:44 PM - Edit history (1)

[DebJ]

18. I did watch the entire video. I still have this question.

It's too long to watch it again.

Was he saying that he did NOT submit that copy? I just didn't get that out of the video.

[Curmudgeoness]

21. No, I believe that what he said

was that the copy "never ran".

[DebJ]

37. yes that is all that I heard. Which shouldn't really be relevant IMHO. n/t

[Fred Sanders]

28. You have to watch Part 2 -1 and 2-2, where he talks with Kathie, Fox 7, department head.

The story is unfolding backwards in time.

All of the videos were previously published, except the one published today.

[DebJ]

38. I can't imagine doing that after forcing myself to listen to all in this one video.

I can't stand Fox anymore than anyone on DU (or anyone with a functioning brain) can,
but I didn't really hear anything substantial in part one.

[Fred Sanders]

40. There are 30 so videos in total, like episodes of a soap opera. Until the last one today.

[DebJ]

46. Oh my goodness. Well, let me be honest then, just this first video

came across to me as a complete waste of my time.

If I was a young journalist and posted a picture of the sheriff like that, and was told by a superior how unhappy it made the sheriff,
well, I would have simply said 'oops' and used a better photo in the future. It's not like the photo told something pertinent about
the story, correct? Why didn't he just say 'oops' and move on?

And he didn't defend himself or even deny that he had used someone else's writing, presenting it as his own. That's what I got from
the first video. Isn't that plagiarism?

I would think he would make his most salient points in the first video. If it goes downhill from here....

well, at any rate, all I can say is God rest his poor soul.

[Fred Sanders]

47. If he is guilty of wasting someone's time, I am sure he is sorry for it, didn't waste mine. And

there is no issue of plagiarism. Not sure how one concludes that.

There is the issue of news manipulation to please the Austin police chief which was the direct cause of his firing without cause, that is clear enough.

[DebJ]

49. I guess you get more of that in the following tapes.

The cause I heard was that he submitted copy that someone else had written, as if it was his own work. Isn't that plagiarism?

Perhaps in his later videos it details how the news was actually manipulated? In the first one, it simply says the sheriff was
so offended about the picture that he would no longer allow direct interviews. So, he's an ass with an ego. But I didn't see
anything in the first video about the news story being changed or manipulated. Many times in life you run into asses with egos.
Just to keep functioning, you do little things they ask in life...which was not to actually change the news story, just not post
unflattering pictures. That's all I heard in the video part 1.

And this issue with the sheriff was only brought up after the execs were frustrated with his lack of response to the plagiarism.
They didn't use the term plagiarism, but what else do you call submitting someone else's work as your own?

Perhaps the other videos explain the whole situation better, but this first one really didn't, iMHO. I always thought that unless
you owned your own paper, any writer's work is subject to edit, unless the writer is someone so special he is given specific
contractual permission to do what he wants and no one is allowed to edit. But granting those rights I would think would be
quite rare, and given only to those whose writing and persona are incredibly profitable to that organization, and where there
is some sense of a good relationship.

I don't have 15 hours of my life to listen to the tapes to wait until he eventually gets to the better, clearer points, the meat of
the story, if it is in there somewhere.

I'd be very willing to listen to someone else's synopsis though. I do despise Fox, and I've been screwed over in my work history,
as have most people who worked for 40 years.

[Fred Sanders]

50. "Copy" in a newsroom is the final version of script sent for broadcast, there was no issue of

"copying" some one else's work. That is all I have to say about it.

I have watched videos 1, 2-1, 2-2, 3-1, 3-2, 3-3 and the final one 7.

[DebJ]

52. So it is okay to submit someone else's work as your own? I still don't get that part, sorry. nt

[JDPriestly]

45. He said that he submitted copy from someone else to see whether his supervisor would

edit it too. The problems had started before he submitted that copy.

I have not heard all the tapes. He may have been a troubled or disturbed person. But I will say that the workplace and not just at Fox but generally the AMERICAN workplace can tip people into mental illness, paranoia and problems very easily. It happens all the time.

While he may have been troubled, he is rather typical of people in the workplace who suffer from our system which gives absolute power and authority to the owners of the businesses. Nothing wrong with that. This is a capitalist country. But companies are so huge and compared to the number of potential employees, so few in fields like journalism and many other fields, that employees end up being frozen out of their professions, their work opportunities.

Even if there are problems in this case, we need to rethink our employee rights laws. People should be able to challenge arbitrary decisions. Employers ask for problems when they have an employee who is exhibiting bizarre or aggressive behavior and they don't have a union to mediate what is in fact no matter the mental state of the employee or employer a dispute.

Employees have problems and develop problems when they feel they are threatened with regard to their ability to earn a livelihood, have no alternatives and believe they are being picked on.

There are two sides to this.

As one who always seemed to end up in writing jobs, my advice to those who write for a living is to leave their egos at home. Just let the changes to your copy or your memos or your letters or your motions or briefs or whatever it is you write go. It doesn't make a difference whether you wrote every word or not. Your boss has to justify his/her job, so he/she has a motivation to change what you write. It isn't personal. Sometimes you get a boss who is either very secure in his job or could care less and then your copy will go right through without edits. And sometimes the stuff that goes right through is your worst in your opinion. Just let it go. It isn't personal.
Your company does not hire you to write the great American novel. They just want you to write and be pleasant about it.

We need unions. They act as intermediaries in workplace disputes.

[DebJ]

48. Thanks yes I remember that part now. I think it didn't stick in my memory because it just seemed

so bizarre. I'm not a journalist, but even as a business manager, what I wrote was first edited before being circulated around the business, at least for a good long while until there was a comfort level established with my abilities. I never took offense at that. So it just made no sense to me that he would do that with someone else's work. It still doesn't.

As far as paranoia, yep, that is true. And there is good reason to be a bit paranoid in the business world. I always ended up coming out on top of the game, ultimately (and so sorry to say 'game'....that disgusts me, but that is how my peers looked at it), but I had to suffer many times from peers who, rather than get off their lazy butts and just do the job, would play all kinds of games to attempt to make you look bad to get rid of you. To them it was a competition, a game. To me, it was my life and my honor. It's rare to find a sense of honor in the workplace anymore.

And it wasn't always peers. My last management job, the new VP who was promoted after I was hired found out my rate of pay, which was equivalent to what I had made at my former employer, from whom the company recruited me. He was so ticked off that I made that much money, he began writing me up for stuff that never happened. At first I thought it was one of my peers playing games, since we were all in line for the next promotion, but over time, it became clear nope, it was my boss, and my boss only. Not an immediate supervisor boss, but this VP who was like an area manager. Each time he wrote me up, I would reply on the form that whatever it was never happened. Oh, and I forgot that he ran around and told the people who worked for me that he had written me up for thus and so, which never happened. After several write-ups over a few months, he came down with the Big Wheel and they said they were offering me two weeks severance pay. I said, Why would I leave? I need this job; I do it well; I have a son to support. Why would I leave? The Big Wheel looked at me incredulously, but I could also see in his eyes that he could tell I was just being honest. So he had a private conversation with me, and I told him that I had concluded that Dennis was so ticked off about my level of pay that he just wanted to get rid of me, and had seemed that way since he first got the job. That made something click in Big Wheel's mind, and i was spared. But I was going to quit in a few months anyway as I had met my out-of-state husband-to-be. Dennis was demoted shortly thereafter. But I ran across him in a training meeting before I left/gave notice, and he still had the balls to make some snotty, insolent comments, and in front of a group of other managers. I was most uncomfortable, but knowing I would be leaving soon, I just bit my lip.

I could tell a million stories about buttholes in business, and half of them were bosses. And every story begins with someone who is focused on anything except doing their job, and doing it well. They don't care who they take down, or if they take the whole company down.

So yes, there is good reason for paranoia, actually. I'm so glad I work at home these days.

[JDPriestly]

55. I don't have the answers, but we need to change how our workplaces function in terms

of boss/employee and employee/employee relationships.

I'm retired and don't have to fool with any of it any more. But I am extremely aware of the many problems in our workplaces. It starts with at-will employment and just gets worse from there.

It wouldn't be so bad if we didn't have such huge companies with so much power and so much information available on the internet about the personal lives of everyone. The guy who was fired from Fox probably felt he had no where to turn, that his problems at that job would follow him the rest of his life.

And competition in the workplace can be vicious.

Very sad. As I said, I don't have the answers. I wish I did.

[Fla Dem]

31. What I got was that his boss was always criticizing his copy and editing it. So as a test

to see if she was just picking on him, he evidently got an outside "professional" copywriter to write copy for him. He submitted it as his and his boss did in fact edit the professional writer's copy. So to him she had a vendetta against him.

[herding cats]

34. This was published back in July after he was suspended

http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2014-07-04/is-acevedo-stonewalling-fox-tv/

The situation sparked from a Feb. 20 incident, when two Austin police officers arrested a jaywalking jogger, Amanda Jo Stephen, near the UT campus. A cell-phone video of the bust – in which the cops can be seen grabbing Stephen to stop her, and she goes limp – went viral, sparking international backlash over the alleged force used by the officers. A media fracas followed Stephen's arrest, one that grew so wild that Chief Acevedo was asked to respond during an unrelated press conference. He made a rhetorical mistake that day – a big one – by attempting to dismiss the backlash, saying, "In other cities there's cops who are actually committing sexual assaults on duty, so I thank God that this is what passes for controversy in Austin, Texas." (Acevedo would later apologize, citing the emotional context of the same-day conviction of a cop-killer, the actual subject of the press conference.)
Phillip Perea was a promotion producer at Fox when this all went down, and he teased a story on Facebook by aligning a picture of Stephen crying next to one of Acevedo reacting. But the one he used of the chief was more sensational than informative, and Perea's superiors didn't like it – because, apparently, neither did Acevedo.
Perea provided the Chronicle a recorded conversation he had with KTBC Vice Presi­dent and General Manager Michael Lewis concerning the Facebook posting. Three months afterward, in a May 24 meeting concerning his imminent suspension (levied, based on the same recordings, due to alleged inappropriate behavior and an alleged general inability to follow directions), Perea recorded Lewis saying that Acevedo hadn't agreed to an individualized interview with Fox since the subsequently deleted photo had been Facebooked.
"He was so offended by that, that we're on the outs," Lewis (as identified by Perea) apparently told Perea. "He won't come on our station anymore." He said Acevedo was letting Fox sit in and record group media interviews, but avoiding one-on-ones – and added that the photo had made Acevedo "look like a buffoon."

-----------------------

It's worth the read if you're interested in some of the backstory here. My phone is being contrary and refuses to format it correctly, I'm sorry about that.

[DebJ]

51. Thanks I'll try to read it later. I read very fast, and always prefer written copy to being held

prisoner to listening to someone else rattle on at their own speed.

[1StrongBlackMan]

15. Posted to for later. n/t

[cp]

19. Very moving

Dearly wish he and his coworkers would be in a union. That would give them protection and redress from management. In a grievance process, there would have been an actual investigation. Here he was left all on his own.
Rest in peace, Mr. Perea.

[Curmudgeoness]

20. What really got me

was when the photo of the police chief was an issue......like Fox does not always find the absolute worst photos of people that they don't like. And there are thousands of examples of that.

[Moostache]

26. Tragic that he had to die to get noticed...

The man in that video stating his case did a very thorough job of explaining exactly why debate with conservatives is impossible - ESPECIALLY conservatives in power.

There is no fact or logic or series of arguments that is going to overcome their preconditioned decisions...EVER.

The right wing authoritarian mind is something that is really becoming more pronounced as our ideological divide that grown and hardened since Impeachment. The "tit-for-tat" nature of politics, the endless feuds and grievances that run all the way back to the founding of the republic in some cases and certainly to the Civil War in MANY places, has been poisonously spewed into the work place and home through the airwaves and broadcasts of the right wing media and their ilk in places like Fox News and its affiliates.

I have noticed a much harder edge to the conversational talking points of right wingers that I have to interact with lately...much more authoritarian and in favor of military, police, prisons and warfare on enemies foreign AND domestic in their eyes. It is a militarization of their thoughts that were already predisposed to that line of thinking but are now being amplified and set on a destructive feedback loop by the Fox News and right wing media fear mongering machines. It is really scary and fascinating at the same time, but it is also very, very dangerous too.

I know a former producer for Fox News who left more than a decade ago because of the way that organization was being run. I wish this poor soul had been able to get out sooner or in a better state than what he ended up in. Rest in peace Phillip.

[Fred Sanders]

27. The message of Phil was Keep the Focus on Fox and their evil intent, in so many ways.

[SmittynMo]

30. I wonder how FAUX is going to respond to this.

I haven't listened to the news today, but you can bet your ass CNN and MSNBC are eating this up.

And for the record, The guy that referenced his youtube page;
I listened to several of them. The audio quality was very poor, and I couldn't make any sense of what I could hear. Therefore I don't buy this crap that his co workers should be afraid of him.

During my long career, I have witnessed many injustices in corporate America. And every time, corporate America wins.
No matter how innocent you may be, YOU will pay. It matters not what they can do to your career, and they could care less.

Yep, gonna have to check the news tonight.

[Fla Dem]

32. They're not going to respond. They have no reason to respond. It's just one more unbalanced,

disgruntled employee, nothing but a squished gnat on the bottle of their shoe.

[CentralMass]

57. They wii probably run they story with a caption that it was an MSNBC employee

[mountain grammy]

36. It's so sad when someone who appeared to be a fighter

gives up in such a tragic manner.

[hopemountain]

43. bullying is/can illicit unstable and irrational

responses from the victim of the bullying. this is why bullying accomplishes what the bullier intends - and why bullying must NOT be tolerated for persons in authority. bullying is unjust and it is unethical.

instead of dissecting the victim's mental state, dissect the mental state of bullies: ass-e-vito & faux. ass-e-vito bullied faux's directors - so, faux bullied the producers.

[Dont call me Shirley]

44. Phillip Perea...

[Fred Sanders]

54. Died fighting the evil that is the Fox corporate culture...never asked for money, asked for Fox

to just change their corporate culture of bullying.

His last demand, chapter 7 published today, for a billion dollars - was satire, I get it. He shot himself hours later in front of Fox national HQ.

A corporate culture of bullying at Fox, nation wide, directed from the top, is what he is trying to expose.

Only enough folks willing to dig deep into this, actual journalists with ethics like Phillip
Perera, not the talking heads pretending to be at Fox, will get to the bottom of this. I get it.


This one has legs, Phillip made sure it does. Those tapes are real life drama played out over 18 months.

It is his living will.

I get it. I respect it.

........................

The FB picture Phillip posted in February, 2014 that gained the wrath of the Austin police chief and Fox leading directly to orders from Fox HQ in New York to fire Perera, without a hearing or just cause, the place where Phillip shot himself dead in front of this morning.

?quality=65&strip=all&w=780&h=780

[Dont call me Shirley]

56. Sly as a FOX is a bully.