Philly Radio: Arbitrator Rules WHYY Must Rehire Reporter

Jad Sleiman

A reporter who was fired for his standup comedy has been reinstated to his job at a Philadelphia-based public radio station through an arbitrator, who agreed that his jokes were, in some part, funny.

AP News reports Jad Sleiman, 34, is to be fully reinstated to his position with WHYY, a Philadelphia-based NPR station, after an arbitrator determined that, while the bits posted to social media could be interpreted as “inflammatory,” the organization “rushed to judgment” in its decision to terminate him.

In a phone call Friday, Sleiman said he felt vindicated by the decision and plans to return to work.

“When a news organization says you’re a racist, bigot, whatever, people believe them,” he said. “So it was a lot of abuse from a lot of people who have never met me, who’ve never seen my stand-up just saw what WHYY said about me, which is not great.”

Sleiman said he was considering further legal action for statements made by WHYY about his character.

Sleiman had been working as a reporter on The Pulse, a nationally syndicated health and science program, since 2018 when he was terminated a year ago after executives found his social media account — under Jad S. or @jadslay — that posted clips of his standup comedy.

Officials at WHYY argued that his standup comedy violated the company’s code of conduct, social media guidelines and values of social responsibility, finding his routine to be “inflammatory.” They submitted nine videos from social media as their evidence. They argued the clips were “‘egregious’ in content, and had ‘sexual connotations, racial connotations, and misogynistic information,’ ” according to the arbitration documents.

Sleiman, who has worked as a reporter in the United States and abroad since 2013 after serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, argued in arbitration his stand-up routines stem from his experiences as an Arab American raised in a Muslim family, and his time in military service and reporting in the Middle East.

While arbitrator Lawrence S. Coburn conceded some or portions of the videos could be seen as inflammatory — “the very low standard in the Collective Bargaining Agreement that I am required to apply,” he wrote — he also found them to be sometimes “simply funny.”

“More important, I find that the message of the clip, if one is open to receiving it, cannot be interpreted to be inflammatory,” he continued.

For another, Coburn said “it is difficult to believe that a fair-minded person would find the clip inflammatory.”

“But the bar is very low, and WHYY’s 1.3 million person audience might have a few people who would find the clip inflammatory,” he added.