Times Fires Reporter

The New York Times has announced that it has fired a reporter for having "undisclosed contact with the public." The paper explained that the unnamed person had "admitted to having disclosed Times Select protected information to non-paying readers."

Sources close to G&S (speaking on condition of anonymity) are reporting that the now former employee may be reporter Dana Priest, but this could not be confirmed. Liberal talking head Juan Williams called the disclosures, "Acts of unspeakable perfidy. She should be prosecuted for such malicious disregard of America's copyright laws."

The Times announced that the fired employee had failed "several" polygraph tests, and had, at one point, become agitated and disoriented when asked to recite from the Editor's Creed, the paper's statement of basic belief. As a condition of employment, all professional staff are required to sign an agreement that they will not permit themselves any thoughts contrary to the Creed.

Insiders speculated that she had stumbled over those passages setting out Paul Krugman's economic theories, which they characterized as "Really difficult. In one part, you're supposed to count to ten, but to substitute a random number for each digit. Hardly anyone but Paul gets that right every time."

Attorneys for the fired reporter announced that they were considering legal action against the Times.

Our client was defending the public's right to know. She firmly believes that readers should not be deprived of the thoughts of Paul Krugman or Maureen Dowd based solely on their economic status. Wisdom belongs to everyone. And the Times certainly knows that poor people are disproportionately members of racial, ethnic, sexual, temporal or differently-abled minorities. And if that's not racism, I don't know what is.

Pinch Sulzberger, Chairman and Publisher of The Times, said in a prepared statement, "The worst thing to come out of this scandal is that our readers never disclosed it to us." Sulzberger, who has become a newspaper legend after working his way up to his current position having started out life as the oldest son of the wealthy family that owns the newspaper, could not be reached for further comment.