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July 24, 2008

KY age discrimination suit goes national on Friday as John Stossel cries, "Give Me a Break!"

TannamaxRemember the EEOC complaint filed by three former 99.7 KY disc jockeys earlier this year? A couple of months after that, ABC News flew two of them — Tanna Guthrie and legendary rock 'n' roll jock Max Floyd — to New York for a classic John Stossel grilling. I don't want to say that John Stossel is predictable, but Vegas suspended betting on how this segment would turn out 10 minutes before it was announced.

And now, nearly four months later, the bit is finally airing on ABC's "20/20" on Friday.

UPDATE: Here's the story as it ran.

Here's its description of the show:

The law says that older employees can not be fired because of their age. When a Kansas City radio station changed music formats, they fired two DJs who had been on the air many years. The DJs are suing, charging the station with age discrimination. But John Stossel says that hiring and firing is the creative destruction that allows businesses to thrive. To the laws and lawyers that try to stop such change, Stossel says, “give me a break!”

That John Stossel would standing athwart the EEOC yelling "stop!" is not exactly news, even though it's airing on a news program. Still, that's not even the silliest part. Tanna Guthrie is working in radio again ... for the same company that fired her! The EEOC complaint is still not resolved, yet the defendant, Entercom Communications, has hired Guthrie to work at another of its stations.

"Four weeks ago, they hired me again for KUDL in afternoons, two doors down," Guthrie said with a laugh. "I wanted to stay in radio. That was my thing. So I am in radio."

But that means, of course, that John Stossel will be able to look at the camera at the end of his segment on Friday and, curling his porn-star mustache, smugly inform the viewers that the woman you just heard has been hired back again ...

"I am totally going to look like an idiot, because you know they're going to air a postscript," said Guthrie. "That's what I would do if I were running the story."

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