i am not defending either side but please remember this is a story in a newspaper.all the facts are not present and it looks like the story is told only by one side,so blame cannot be determined just by this story.i will not even go into media bias.
It's great when people, usually conservatives, throw around that phrase, "media bias," as if all news people (except Fox News/Murdoch associates) are biased and report everything with a supposed "liberal" slant.
If you've never had a reporting job (as I have) and you've never studied journalism for four to eight years of your life in a university while working at all hours to pay your way through school in pursuit of that vaunted journalism degree that's going to earn you a
whopping $25,000 a year for about the next ten years after graduating, you clearly don't have your facts straight.
Interview sources can engage in acts of chicanery and collusion (it's happened to me), making your story indeed come out biased, and you'll only find out after the fact-- well after the story is newsworthy, and well after your editor will allow you to print a follow-up to correct the inaccuracies. If you've never stared down a news deadline everyday of your life, working your sources and playing phone tag while being expected to hit the streets and find the news everyday, don't you dare hint holier-than-thou tendencies about "liberal media bias" toward this dogged reporter and the thousands of others who are underpaid and under-appreciated for bringing you all the news you love to rip down as "liberal-biased." If this story was told from a "one-sided" perspective, believe me, it can happen-- usually when the "other side" refuses to talk to you, no matter how many times you call them and ask them to respond to the comments from your interview source. Again, ask me how I know. I've been there, done that.
With all that said, "at will" employment gives employers a free pass to fire pretty much anybody for any or no reason. Except, that is, when that status is protected by law. "Gender" is one of those statuses, and in this case, it appears ODFL fired the employee on a basis of gender. Not simply a matter of the employee being female/male/both(?), but because they didn't like the fact that the person made a choice to be something different than they wanted him/her to be. It would be like the employee deciding he wanted to claim African-American lineage because he was adopted by an African-American family, but his skin was white as snow. So he'd fill out the necessary paperwork to show such status, and once the change took effect, the company would fire him. Now, surely you'd call that racial discrimination.
Well, it all depends on how Old Dominion handled that firing. You don't need a reason for terminating someone as long as it's not on Age, Sexual Orientation, Race, or any type of discrimination..
