Netflix said on Friday that it had fired an employee for disclosing confidential financial information about what it paid for Dave Chappelle’s comedy special The Closer, which some condemned as being transphobic.
The employee, who was not named, shared “confidential, commercially sensitive information outside the company,” Netflix said in a statement.
“We understand this employee may have been motivated by disappointment and hurt with Netflix, but maintaining a culture of trust and transparency is core to our company,” it said.
Photo: AP
The statement said the information was referenced in a Bloomberg news article, which reported that Netflix spent US$24.1 million on The Closer, which first aired last week.
The article also mentioned the lower budgets for a 2019 Chapelle special, a Bo Burnham special and the nine-episode hit Squid Game.
Netflix said that a review of its internal access logs pinpointed the information to a single person, who “admitted that they downloaded and shared sensitive company information externally.”
The Closer, first aired on Oct. 1 and had gained at least 10 million views, but Chapelle’s remarks about the transgender community raised protests within Netflix and from LGBTQ activists.
Media watchdog group GLAAD said that “anti-LGBTQ content” contravenes Netflix’s policy to reject programs that incite hate or violence.
However, Netflix cochief executive officer Ted Sarandos told managers in an internal memo that the show does not cross “the line on hate” and would remain on the streaming service.
Several Netflix employees had criticized the special. Transgender employees and their coworkers are being urged to stage a walkout in protest on Wednesday.
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
North Korea yesterday fired a ballistic missile, Seoul’s military said, about a week after US President Donald Trump approved South Korea’s plan to build a nuclear-powered submarine. Analysts have said Seoul’s plan to construct one of the nuclear-driven vessels would likely draw an aggressive response from Pyongyang. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said North Korea fired an unidentified ballistic missile toward the East Sea, referring to the body of water also known as the Sea of Japan. The missile landed in the sea outside Japan’s economic waters and no damage or injuries had been reported, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said. The missile
RSS