Vester Flanagan – a former Virginia reporter who fatally shot his former co-workers on live television Wednesday – had a tumultuous history with his WDBJ coworkers, especially photographers, court records show.
Williams, on right, as a WDBJ reporter
Bryce Williams / Vimeo / Via vimeo.com
Internal memos from Vester Flanagan's 10 months at WDBJ detail his contentious working relationships with the station's cameramen and his belief that then-intern Alison Parker, who authorities said he shot and killed on live television on Wednesday, had made racist remarks toward him.
These files, posted online by 8 News WRIC Richmond, are part of court record from a civil lawsuit that Flanagan filed against the station in March 2014, a year after he was fired. In the lawsuit, Flanagan claimed that he had suffered harassment, racial and sexual discrimination, and retaliation while employed at WDBJ before he was terminated.
The internal memos tell a different story, detailing how Flanagan – who used the name Bryce Williams on television and social media – began exhibiting troubling behavior that left his coworkers feeling "threatened or uncomfortable" on three separate occasions during his first month and a half at the station.
On May 31, 2012, two months after Flanagan's March 29 start date, then-WDBJ news director Dan Dennison wrote to Flanagan about an incident where Flanagan lost his temper during an altercation with a reporter that left his colleague and two photographers who observed the incident feeling threatened.
Dennison also noted two separate incidents where Flanagan tried to control the way his interviews were recorded and criticized the photographers working with him on the assignments in a way that made the photographer and the interviewee feel uncomfortable.
Flanagan had particularly difficult relationships with the station's photographers, the documents show.
In a another memo titled "Behavioral Improvement and Expectations," sent to Flanagan in June, Dennison wrote, "There is no doubt in my mind that you want to do well at WDBJ7 and have an overarching desire to please. However, your behavior continues to cause a great deal of friction with your co-workers, particularly your photographer teammates. You must make improvements immediately or you will face termination of employment."
"It seems that you are taking the actions of many of the photographers quite personally and misinterpreting their actions or words," Dennison wrote. "Clearly much damage has been done already in your working relationships with several members of the photography staff. It is your responsibility, going forward, to work at repairing these relationships, as the station cannot be put in the position of making assignments based on the inability of team members to get along." He told Flanagan that he was required to contact the station's Health Advocate employee assistance program and set up a meeting, or else he would be fired.
"We can no longer afford to have you engage in behaviors that constitute creation of a hostile work environment," Dennison wrote.
At Flanagan's 90-day performance evaluation on Aug. 8, 2012, he was given an "unacceptable" review in the category related to interpersonal relationships and working together effectively with other members of the news team, with Assistant News Director Dave Seidel citing his ability to get along with cameramen.
"Bryce communicates with the assignment desk and has worked to improve his scripting with producers," Seidel wrote. "The area where Bryce must make immediate improvement is with photographers. This issue is well-documented and has been discussed."
Bryce Williams / Vimeo / Via vimeo.com
Flanagan's nine month review, on Dec. 24, 2012, detailed extensive issues with his work performance, a separate issue from the interpersonal issues raised in the documents.
According to a memo written after the meeting, during the review, Dennison said that the reporter had "plateaued," saying that he and others at the station had "serious concerns" about Flanagan's "news-gathering, time management skills, and on-air performance." A repeated criticism was Flanagan's tendency to "repeat, rather than do original reporting and use critical thinking and questioning skills to produce truly memorable reporting." Dennison said that this led to "thinly sourced material and a lack of substance in your final work."
"Avoid being merely a human tape recorder," he wrote, ending the meeting by telling Flanagan to improve within two weeks or face disciplinary action that could include termination from employment.
According to meeting notes that appear to be written by Seidel on January 14, Flanagan had made sufficient improvement to keep his job, but he was still having trouble working with photographers assigned to his stories.
A photographer named Trevor Fair had apparently gone to management after working with Flanagan on a story and reported that the journalist attempted to enter a home without permission to find an interview suspect, according to the documents. Flanagan disputed the cameraman's version of events and said that, "he felt like he was being thrown under the bus," according to the documents.
Later in the January meeting, Seidel writes, "the discussion at one point returned to Bryce's relationship with photographers. I encouraged Bryce to take their counsel. I suggested that he think of them as one of the first viewers of the story."
"I encouraged Bryce to give them the benefit of the doubt and to not view [the photographers] as meddling in a reporter's business."
At a news conference on Thursday, WDBJ general manager Jeff Marks said, "At that point, he raised some concerns with HR of perceived unfairness, which were immediately investigated and found to be without merit."
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/1Im13g2
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