Washington Times Editorial Page Editor Richard Miniter met with an official of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for nearly three hours yesterday to file the complaint alleging age, disability, and religious discrimination that we told you about yesterday, his lawyer tells TPM. You can read the complaint right here.
The employment status of Miniter, who was named vice president of opinion in March and is still on the masthead of the paper (see a picture of yesterday’s edition below), is in dispute.
In the Washington Post article on the complaint, published last night following TPM’s reporting on Miniter, Howard Kurtz reports that Miniter was hired as a consultant in October 2008. The Uniification church mass wedding that Miniter charges he was forced was in December 2008 in New York, before he was named to the editor position. The Post adds:
[Miniter] said in an interview that he “was made to feel there was no choice” but to attend the ceremony if he wanted to keep his job, and that executives “gave me examples of people whose careers at the Times had grown after they converted” to the Unification Church.
The complaint charges that Times publisher Tom McDevitt “coerced” Miniter into attended the event, in which Rev. Sun Myung Moon married a few dozen couples. The complaint also alleges that Miniter was investigated by the Times after joking about “Moon’s long, flowing garb in a church brochure,” according to the Post.
McDevitt and the spokesman for the Times have not responded to calls seeking comment about this and other recent stories on the paper.
Miniter’s complaint charges that he was terminated by the Times in October, after being asked to work at home in July. It says he refrained from seeking other employment in the intervening months.
Miniter’s full complaint is here, and the masthead of yesterday’s paper, featuring Miniter in the center column, is below.
Late Update: Asked what’s next, Larry Klayman, Miniter’s attorney, tells TPM this morning: “We are working on round two.”
