Nebraska Station Fires News Anchor For Helping Circulate a Pro-Life Petition in Church
Nebraska local TV station KNOP-TV in North Platte, Nebraska fired a long time employee after it found out she had helped distribute a pro-life petition at her local church.
KNOP-TV is part of a chain of over 100 TV stations owned by Gray Television.
Melanie Standiford worked as a news director and co-anchor at the TV station for five years before she was fired for helping to pass a local ordinance in her town of Curtis, which would put the issue of designating the Nebraska town as a Sanctuary City for the Unborn on the 2023 ballot.
Shannon Booth, KNOP general manager, told the North Platte Bulletin that “KNOP’s news personnel are not permitted, at any time and regardless of beliefs, to actively engage in any political activity for any candidate, party or ballot initiative.”
Apparently, KNOP-TV became aware of Ms. Standiford’s pro-life activism when another local news outlet, the Flat Water Press mentioned interviewed her and called into question the propriety of a journalist getting involved in an issue she covers.
In Curtis, Melanie Standiford helped collect 47 signatures. Standiford is the news director of KNOP, a TV station and NBC affiliate that serves the area around North Platte. She has extensively covered the very issue she helped petition for in her town.
Flatwaterpress.org: Six Nebraska towns are trying to ban abortion. Will it change anything? Sept. 30, 2022
Less than a week after the article in the FreeWaterPress.org was published, Mrs. Standiford, a mother of nine, was summarily fired by KNOP-TV.
The organizer of the Sanctuary Cities for The Unborn, Mark Lee Dickson told LifeNews.com he thinks the firing was calculated to suppress the silence pro-lifers.
By firing Standiford for circulating a petition in her church, Standiford’s employer is sending a strong message to Nebraskans who wish to participate in the citizen initiative process: If you like your job, don’t even try it.”
Mark Lee Dickson, director of Right To Life of East Texas and founder of the Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn
The Sanctuary City movement along with the Safe City (The Personhood Alliance’s version of the similar local ordinances) movement are ways for local residents to advocate for the rights of the unborn when state leaders, such as Nebraska’s Republican governor and Nebraska’s GOP dominated legislature, refuse to do so.
Please sign our petition directed to KNOP-TV and the company that owns the station, Gray Television, demanding Melanie Standiford be reinstated immediately.
