Termination knots lefty knickers

Following her Logie night Twitter indiscretions Catherine Deveny was dumped as a contributor for The Age. The Left is outraged that a corporate media enterprise – Fairfax – has acted in what it deems its best interest in terminating its relationship with the would be comedienne:

The backstory for any of you who just walked in, is that non-contracted weekly The Age columnist Deveny was dumped yesterday by The Age's editor in chief Paul Ramadge, not because of anything she wrote for the paper, but because of some off-colour gags she sent out on Twitter during Sunday night's Logie broadcast.

The Age, Ramadge revealed on radio this morning, has no formal policy covering the conduct of its staff (never mind contributors) when they use social media. It seems now to have set a benchmark: make any sort or reference to the potential sexual proclivities of Bindi Irwin and you are out. I guess they had to start somewhere.

Ramadge was of course a bit slow out of the blocks on this one, giving Deveny the flick only yesterday, not in a heated phone call on Sunday night just before the silver Logie for best supporting presenter in a rural light entertainment docudrama. He thus gives the appearance of acting not as an immediate response to the Sunday night tweets (would Bindi get "laid" would Rove's new partner "die" etc) but rather in response to the heated kerfuffle drummed up by the usual stern guardians of media probity: Andrew Bolt, Neil Mitchell, A Current Affair and Today Tonight. All of whom have been in a lather for the past 48 hours.

That's the ABC's Jonathan Green, whose knickers are all a-bunch because The Age terminated its relationship with someone who wasn't even an employee. Green attempts to milk the faux outrage for all it's worth, even linking to the debacle-prone Pure Poison's Jeremy Sear he hired when an editor at Crikey.

The powers that be at Fairfax decided that Deveny was no longer an asset and told her her services were no longer required. She'd probably still have the gig if she occasionally managed to be funny. End of story.