Another TV news personality has been urged not to have children. The twist is that this time it is a male anchor, not a woman.

For those not enamored of following Florida media insider baseball, you can bail out now. But for the rest of us media whores, there is a wonderful story that has been playing out for a week or so in Miami, where the ABC affiliate WPLG has fired one of its anchors who now claims it is because he is (gasp!) gay.

Charles Perez has fought back, with a sexual orientation discrimination complaint (which he claims triggered the firing) and a blog post in the Daily Beast in which he details his claims that station management was afraid of his increasing gay profile and urged him not to have children with his male partner. (The station, in written statements, denies Perez’s allegations.)

Perez writes:

Bottom line, I believe they sold me out as soon as my being gay became too widely known. It made them uncomfortable and made me, in their eyes, less advertiser-friendly. They’d demoted me two weeks earlier from main weekday anchor to weekend anchor. It was a move I quickly recognized was leading to the door, and I wasn’t prepared to watch my career circle down the drain.

My ex-employer will never admit this, but if the past decades have taught us anything, it is to be much more subtle about our prejudices. Getting rid of “the black guy” or “the woman” or “the gay guy” or “the Jew”—not to mention many other select groups—has given way to “we really should go in a different direction.” Or “we’ve really got to consider what’s the least objectionable choice.”

And he continues:

One of my colleagues, a higher-up at the station, told me: “The weekends will be better for you, anyway, Charles. You and Keith [my partner] want to have kids. It’s a lot less high-profile there.”

It was a suggestion that never would have been made to one of my straight colleagues, male or female. The only thing I could take from it was that my profile as a gay man, especially if I were to have kids and, God forbid, get married, would render me less promotable and less advertiser-friendly.

In fact, over the previous five months, I’d been told, “Don’t get married, Charles. We don’t need that.” I’d also been told not to have children. In essence: “You’re the main anchor and you’re gay, but let’s not push it.”

To me, having the family I want is not pushing it. Living with love, commitment, and dignity is not pushing it.

A few weeks ago I announced to my wife that I would not be watching The Today Show in the mornings any more. I just got fed up with its growing tabloid style and insistence on flogging non-stories to death. Like this week’s “exclusive” multi-day interview with Susan Boyle. Or the dude trying to get his kid back from Brazil who is interviewed at least twice a week. Or the latest family with a loved one attacked by a critter/rescued from a certain death/dying from a disease/etc.

But this morning, I broke my rule and paid the price for it. Meredith, Matt, Al and the rest of the formerly great NBC morning news show led the broadcast with this top story: Barack Obama had ruined his newser on health care last night by criticizing the wrongful arrest of prominent Harvard prof Henry Louis Gates Jr. last week.

ABC’s Good Morning America apparently did the same thing.

St. Petersburg Times media critic Eric Deggans noticed, too, writing this AM:

…[W]hy did the Today show — by far TV’s most-watched morning show — spend its first segment this morning discussing what the president said about the arrest of a black scholar in Cambridge, Mass.?

Here is how the “journalists” left at NBC played the president’s desperate attempt to pull out his health care victory on the website this AM:

It reflects the online priorities of Today as shown by this screen grab:

So if you, like me, don’t give a shit about Susan Boyle and the rest of her life in the UK and want instead to help be part of the most important discussion going on this week, on health care reform, here are some links to help you out:

NYT — Obama Moves to Reclaim the Debate on Health Care

NPR/TNR: Straight Talk on Health Care

WSJ — Live-Blogging Obama’s News Conference

Further reading from the .PDF Library:

white_house_forum_on_health_reform_report

Hidden Costs

Billy Mays at the Mickey D’s drive-thru …

h/t to Watch This Now

On his return to the air weeks after his arrest.

From the St. Petersburg Times:

Rhodes, 50, was supposed to be tried today on charges tied to his Jan. 16 arrest. But the trial was continued until Wednesday because his attorney was awaiting transcripts from a previous hearing.

Now, instead of going to trial, Rhodes will plead no contest on Wednesday to a misdemeanor obstruction charge, defense attorney Jeff Brown said.

As part of the plea deal, Rhodes will serve 50 hours of community service. Adjudication will be withheld, meaning he will not have a conviction on his record.

Reporters are gathering at the Hillsborough Medical Examiner’s Office for a noon newser at which a preliminary report into the death of famed TV pitchman Billy Mays is set to be released. We’ll pass along coverage on Twitter (follow @poho) and over at the Daily Loaf blog.

The top headlines after the jump …

• The latest sucker bet in FLA.
• Hispanic turnout doubled in 2008 in Republican SW FLA.
• Crist: We’ll only make “smart cuts.”
• Top TV reporting jobs remain lily-white.
• NYT to feature display ads on front page.
• Richardson out before he was in.
• Credit market, not clean-air regs, stop a new coal-fired power plant.
• Defending Ray Sansom.
• In 2009, Big Media to share everything.
• IE vs. Firefox.
• Facebook’s busiest day ever? Christmas Eve 2008.
• Al Franken to be certified as winner today.
• Photographing Obama’s Secret Service detail (slideshow).