OMG!, 3rd Edition...Who Knew What, When?

LongFormJournalism?

WeDon'tNeedNoStinkingLongFormJournalism!Ville

Back when the Overstory Media Group first fired the core staff at its flagship Capital Daily outlet (i.e. the one that had actually been making money) last week, one of the company's principals, former Daily Hive owner Farhan Mohamed, unequivocally stated that he did NOT know that employees were planning to unionize:

That was early in the morning of Thursday February 2nd.

However, in a Tyee story published the next day, Friday February 3rd, Mr. Mohammed told Zak Vescera something very different:

...Mohamed confirmed to The Tyee that he had been aware of the union drive, though the company has denied it played any role in the cuts...

Why does this matter?

Because, in my opinion, the timing of the firings, which occurred the day before the announcement of the unionization drive makes it hard not to wonder if the former was designed to kibosh the latter, especially given the following, which was reported by Ethan Cox writing for Ricochet:

...OMG sources confirmed to Ricochet that three of the four fired employees (at Capital Daily) were lead organizers with the union effort...

Further on the timing point...

The other OMG principal, deep-pocketed tech guy (i.e. not the former BCL party leader*) Andrew Wilkinson, stated, also early in the morning of Thursday February 2nd, that he knew about the unionization drive but claimed that it would have been pretty dumb of them to fire folks given that the drive went forward the next day, regardless:

Which is all fine and good, as far deflector spike-spin attempts go.

But ask yourself the following...

What would the reaction have been if the firings had occurred the day AFTER the unionization announcement?

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OMG! 1st and 2nd editions are here and here.

*Thanks to longtime reader NVG for clearing that up.

As for that deflector spike-spin strategy thingee...It's now almost a full week since the firings and still not a peep out of the corpMedia, at least according to today's  Googleplex...

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