Mar 07 2008

Reporter who badgered elderly property defender gets the ax

Posted by Neocon in 2nd Amendment, Media Bias

I think everyone remembers the video report that a local Fox news affiliate in Texas ran where a female reporter hassled a 69 year old man who had shot two criminals in two separate property protection incidents. Rebecca Aguilar kept herself in the way of his car door, preventing him from leaving and ignoring his requests to shut off the camera, while asking such fair-minded questions as “are you a trigger happy kind of person? Is that what what you wanted to do? Shoot to kill?”

Mrs. Aguilar was put on suspension after the firestorm that her report created bit Fox 4 in the rear, and now we learn that she has been fired.

In a telephone interview Wednesday night, Aguilar, 49, said she was checking her mail at mid-afternoon that day when she noticed an envelope under her front door mat. It informed her that Fox4 was exercising an option to drop her at the halfway point of a two-year contract that began on March 6, 2007.

“No doorbell, no knock on the door,” said Aguilar, who had been on paid suspension since Oct. 16th following her controversial interview with an elderly West Dallas salvage business owner who had shot and killed two alleged burglars within three weeks time.

They didn’t even have the courtesy to deliver the news in person and block her door with an umbrella. Imagine that. Rebecca doesn’t think that it is fair, stating:

“I just think it’s really sad that I gave this company 14 years and I did about 6,000 interviews,” Aguilar said. “And now I’m out of a job because of one interview? It’s like in one swoop it ruined my reputation. It ruined my name.”

I suppose she never thought to consider that boxing in an old man, recording his hands shaking from nerves, ignoring his requests to stop and accusing him of being trigger happy might ruin his name. It was just another story for her.

She hasn’t decided whether she will sue the network to get her job back, and her husband is still employed there, but I’m hoping that she just fades away.