{"id":1696305,"date":"2022-10-14T06:06:05","date_gmt":"2022-10-14T10:06:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1696305"},"modified":"2022-10-16T14:00:13","modified_gmt":"2022-10-16T18:00:13","slug":"award-winning-news-director-fired-for-advocating-for-pro-life-policies-at-her-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/award-winning-news-director-fired-for-advocating-for-pro-life-policies-at-her-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Award-Winning News Director Fired for Advocating for Pro-Life Policies at Her Church"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Faward-winning-news-director-fired-for-advocating-for-pro-life-policies-at-her-church%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1696305&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>An award-winning news director and co-anchor in Nebraska was recently fired from her job after her bosses discovered she had advocated for a pro-life initiative at a her own church.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this month, Melanie Standiford of Curtis, Nebraska, was fired from her job at NBC affiliate KNOP-TV, a gig she had enjoyed for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.catholicnewsagency.com\/news\/252532\/christian-newscaster-fired-for-circulating-pro-life-petition-speaks-out\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">five years<\/a>, after executives at parent company Gray Television learned that she had helped collect signatures at St. John\u2019s Lutheran Church and one other church in the hopes of making the small town of Curtis a &#8220;sanctuary city for the unborn.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The ballot initiative in Curtis is part of a larger network of similar initiatives circulating in <a href=\"https:\/\/flatwaterfreepress.org\/six-nebraska-towns-are-trying-to-ban-abortion-will-it-change-anything\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">six<\/a> small Nebraska towns \u2014 Arnold, Brady, Curtis, Hershey, Paxton, and Wallace \u2014 to create a larger safe haven for unborn babies and pregnant women in the western area of the state. The initiatives are largely symbolic, as the closest abortion clinic is hundreds of miles away in Denver. However, if they pass, they will make a statement that these small towns \u2014 which have a total population of just over 3,500 people \u2014 are an abortion-free zone.<\/p>\n<p>The Curtis initiative would allow for lawsuits against any medical professional who knowingly performs an abortion within the town limits or against those &#8220;aiding or abetting&#8221; a pregnant woman in procuring an abortion by, for instance, driving her to a distant clinic. Transmitting abortion-inducing drugs through the mail is already illegal in Nebraska.<\/p>\n<p>Standiford, a 50-year-old mother of nine, said she has always been pro-life about abortion. &#8220;It\u2019s just right versus wrong in my mind,&#8221; she <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lifenews.com\/2022\/10\/13\/christian-reporter-blasts-tv-station-that-fired-her-because-shes-pro-life\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">said<\/a>, though she also admitted that abortion has not always been one of her <a href=\"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/nebraska-broadcaster-fired\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;soapbox issues<\/a>.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>However, her pro-life position became publicly known when an article about the pro-life petitions was published in the Flatwater Free Press. The reporter of the article, Natalia Alamdari, called Standiford and asked whether a journalist ought to gather signatures for a pro-life petition. Standiford replied, &#8220;You\u2019re probably right. I probably, maybe shouldn\u2019t have even done that. But who knew it would be an issue?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But Standiford said that she expressed her pro-life beliefs in detail to Alamdari, but that Alamdari isolated one comment \u2014 which Standiford thought was off the record \u2014 to &#8220;attack&#8221; her.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The article was an attack, an attack directly on me,&#8221; Standiford said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I told [Alamdari], &#8216;This is in the privacy of my church. This is something that I did, acting as a Christian, in the privacy of my church,'&#8221; Standiford continued.<\/p>\n<p>The day after the Alamdari piece was published, Standiford was fired.<\/p>\n<p>When her boss came in and reportedly informed her that she had been terminated for &#8220;practicing partisan politics,&#8221; Standiford recalled that she responded, &#8220;I didn\u2019t think I was being political with that in my home church, sitting in the pews in my church.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>KNOP general manager Shannon Booth confirmed Standiford&#8217;s dismissal.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our long-standing company policy encourages civic involvement among our employees, so long as such activities do not give the appearance of interfering with journalistic impartiality,&#8221; Booth said in a statement. &#8220;In furtherance of that<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An award-winning news director and co-anchor in Nebraska was recently fired from her job after her bosses discovered she had advocated for a pro-life initiative at a her own church. Earlier this month, Melanie Standiford of Curtis, Nebraska, was fired from her job at NBC affiliate KNOP-TV, a gig she had enjoyed for five years, &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1696307,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[547],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1696305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-bongino-report"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1696305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1696307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1696305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1696305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1696305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}