What the hell?
“Why?” I said, still reeling.
“Something about an ethics issue with her current news station over a news report she did.”
“I…I need to go read this.”
I hurried back to my phone. When I pulled up my inbox, I could see Hailey had literally sent it just minutes ago. Mom probably hadn’t been doing anything, which explained why she had seen it before I did.
“Hey guys, I just wanted to give you an important update on my life. WPTV recently made some changes to a long-form piece I did that completely altered the tone and the message of the story. After hearing from my boss about how the station needed ratings, not truth, I finally discovered how true this is. So, I have quit.”
What the hell?
Even though she was near the Devil’s Patriots, and even though she’d admitted to having to do a few pieces on them from time to time, by and large, Hailey seemed to have a good life in Phoenix. And now she was quitting?
“I have some ideas in store. I have posted a few videos to YouTube and they have already done well. I am going to get some local waitressing and bartending work. Hilariously enough—or depressingly enough, depending on your perspective—I might make more working as a bartender than as a newscaster, though of course, I won’t be as famous as I was before. I…”
I scanned through the rest of the email. She had something there about having living expenses paid, she was in a great place, this was not a rushed decision…
It didn’t matter to me. It felt foolish to throw away a promising career over an ethics complaint. Yes, there were ethical issues worth resigning over. No one was, well, probably no one was getting fucked over by a slightly altered news story.
I called her right then and there. It wasn’t like she had work to worry about.
“Hey, girl.”
“You sound way too relaxed for someone who just quit her job.”
“It was—”
“What was the piece about? Was it some corrupt government official the station protected?”
“No.”
“Some businessman treating labor unethically and the station covered it up?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Hailey drew in a breath.
“It was an issue that I realized a lot of people misunderstand, and I wanted to correct it. The station instead went for the sensationalized issue and made it into what it always has been presented as.”
OK, that was…not specific at all.
“You’re not going to tell me?”
“I mean, did I not just?”
She was evading me.
Now I’d gone from frustrated about her to worried. Had something happened? Had Hailey been blackmailed? In her line of work, being a public figure, it wasn’t out of the question.
“Not really, no.”
“Well, it was a building issue, anyway. This was just the straw that broke the camel’s back, but it wasn’t a one-ton weight dropped out of nowhere that shattered it alone.”
God bless her. She was so much smarter than me.
