Longtime Birmingham, Ala., reporter Karen Church is out after nearly two decades at Fox affiliate WBRC.
Church tells the Birmingham News she was fired by station management after mistakenly reporting a city councilman had turned himself in to officer at the city jail after an altercation with the city’s mayor:
Church said she realized her mistake about an hour later when a police captain at the jail told her Lundy was not there.
Advertisement“I immediately went into, ‘OK, well, let’s see how I can fix this,'” she said. “And then they (Fox 6 management) later pulled me off the story, and I totally understand.
“That was an error, but it was one error in 17 years and it was a big one. But it wasn’t because I wasn’t doing my job. I asked the right questions. I didn’t get the right answers, at least the accurate answers.”
Church says she was fired the same day. She says she had previously been told her contract would not be renewed–it was to expire in March. “And the sad part for me is, when I started in the late ’70s, I was the only female in the first and the third newsrooms I worked in. I put up with a lot. . . . I paved the way for people who are now becoming my replacements, which I don’t appreciate.”