A KUSI news photographer/editor said he was fired on Aug. 1 because he objected to taking out an image of two gay men kissing during a 10:00 p.m. news report about the San Diego LGBT Pride festival.

John Schardt said KUSI cited the reason for his dismissal as “gross insubordination.”

According to Schardt, he was assigned to edit coverage of the Pride festival footage that was filmed on July 29. Upon completing his edits of the tape, Schardt asked a co-editor and his supervising editor what they thought of his edits, which included shirtless men dancing on a parade float and an image of two men kissing.

Schardt said the supervising producer told him the footage could “absolutely not” be aired, and that the owners of the station, Michael McKinnon and Michael McKinnon Jr., “don’t want to see that shit on their channel.”

“Basically, there was nothing wrong about showing two guys kissing,” Schardt said. “Just because my supervisor was afraid of getting a few calls from people who find that offensive, and worrying that if the McKinnons saw it, her job would be in jeopardy … it doesn’t justify the whole ordeal that had happened.”

Schardt provided the Gay & Lesbian Times with a DVD featuring both his edits and what eventually aired on KUSI on July 29. In Schardt’s original edit, there is a man with his arm around another man in front of Hamburger Mary’s, who then leans over to kiss him.

In the version KUSI’s aired, just before the man kisses the other man it cuts to another scene in the parade.

KUSI has a policy dictated by the station owners against airing a same-sex kiss and other gay-related material, Schardt said.

The Gay & Lesbian Times called KUSI studios to speak with station owner Michael McKinnon to ask if such a policy exists. After leaving a message with McKinnon’s secretary, human resources director Sally Luck returned our phone call.

“I don’t know what that policy is,” Luck said. “I’m in human resources. I’m not in the newsroom, but we probably wouldn’t share the policy with you; no offense.”

When asked if we could speak to McKinnon directly, Luck said she would pass along the message, but McKinnon had requested that she return our phone call.

Luck said she could not comment about personnel matters for “obvious reasons.”

Schardt said he told his producer he declined to re-edit the footage and asked to edit other material instead, but she told him it was not possible and he had to either re-edit the footage or go home.

After repeatedly requesting something else to edit, Schardt said he got on the phone with the newsroom manager and asked for something in writing to explain why the footage had to be re-edited. Schardt said the newsroom manager wrote, “We make the editing decisions” on a piece of paper and handed it to him.

Schardt said he then re-edited the footage to show the man about to kiss his boyfriend and then cut to a shirtless man dancing on a float, though that footage was not used in the final edit.

Schardt said he then suffered a panic attack and the newsroom manager escorted him out of the station, sending him home for the evening to calm down.

When he arrived at the KUSI studio on Aug. 1, Schardt said he could not clock into the time-keeping system and was told to go to a conference room where he met with Luck, news director Craig Hume and chief photographer Tom Zizzi.

During that meeting, Schardt said he was told the station was letting him go for “gross insubordination.”

About a week before the Pride parade, an obscenity and indecency form was distributed to KUSI employees to caution them against using any material at length that is overtly sexual or considered offensive, Schardt said. This memo, he said, was distributed following an incident where the word “Goddamn” was accidentally aired, and another incident where reporter Dan Plante interviewed a person who said the word “blow job” when quoting a bumper sticker about President Bush.

A KUSI employee who asked to remain anonymous confirmed these incidents occurred and that the station management was trying to be extra careful when using anything viewers might deem offensive. She said other stations in town “aired essentially the same stuff that John was using in his story and there were no repercussions.”

“What the management was fearing in this particular instance I see was not justified,” she said, adding that KUSI often uses archival footage displaying gay and lesbian couples when covering same-sex marriage news.

“In fact, the footage that we have in our archives is actually more clear and graphic than the footage he was using,” she said.

Frederick Lane, author of the recently published book The Decency Wars: The Campaign to Cleanse American Culture, said an interesting question is whether or not the FCC would call a same-sex kiss on a 10:00 p.m. nightly news broadcast obscene.

“I’m guessing that the answer to that might not be that they would,” he said. “On the other hand, if you’ve got a private media owner, that’s really where the issue is. It’s not really the FCC. The FCC’s really an excuse at that point. Obviously, from the FCC’s perspective, how is that different from a heterosexual couple kissing?”

Lane said news stations owners have First Amendment rights, and not airing a same-sex kiss or having a policy against it does not violate federal law.

“Federal law is not really going to prevent somebody from being a bigot,” he said. “There are federal laws that prevent discrimination in certain contexts – like hiring, for instance, or medical treatment and things like that – but you’d really be in a difficult position if you were forcing someone to broadcast on their station something that they didn’t approve of…. It’s just unfortunate.”

Schardt said he is looking for another job while freelancing. His application for unemployment was denied and he plans to file an appeal.