Business & Tech

Larry Connors' Firing: Was It Right or Wrong?

The long-time KMOV-Ch. 4 anchor was fired over Facebook posts relating to the IRS. Do you miss him? Were you sorry to see him go?

It’s been more than two weeks since long-time KMOV-Ch. 4 anchor Larry Connors was dismissed by the station over a controversy surrounding his posts on Facebook about the IRS.

The May 22 dismissal hasn’t left the front-burner after he filed a discrimination suit on May 30 against the station, alleging he was unfairly paid less than a recent co-anchor, Vickie Newton, who is black, according to a Patch.com report and a story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Connors was originally fired, according to a report in the Huffington Post, for what the news station called "taking a personal political position [that created] an appearance of bias."

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After news broke about the IRS targeting Tea Party groups during the 2012 election, Conners took to his KMOV Facebook page to air a personal concern about the scandal. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Conners, who spent 27 years as an anchor at KMOV, suggested that he might have been targeted by the IRS after interviewing President Obama in 2012.

Since then, the issue still didn’t leave the front-burner when last week, another former KMOV anchor, Julius Hunter, sounded off in a Post-Dispatch op-ed piece. He said his former colleague at Channel 4, basically, needs to suck it up and move on.

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What do you think about Connors’ unceremonious dismissal and the ongoing hubbub surrounding it? Was he within his rights to muse about the IRS in a public Facebook posting after his interview with the president? Or did it cross an ethical line? Do you miss Connors face on the KMOV newscasts?


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