On election night, Rob Sneed, a freelance anchor and reporter for FOX13 Memphis, asked Tennessee Gov.-elect Marsha Blackburn a question many Black voters in the state were asking: “How are you going to be able to help the Black American community?” Her first answer was general. Sneed pressed: “How?” Two days later, on Nov. 5, the station laid Sneed off.
Blackburn’s answer, as reported, was: “I hope that they will come work with me.” Asked again, she said: “I hope that they are going to be meeting with me. They’re going to find that I’ve got an open door.” She named no policy, no program and no budget line.
The question was not a stunt. Memphis is a majority-Black city, and a Black reporter there asking what the incoming governor will do for Black residents is the job. The answer Sneed got was an invitation to a meeting.
Sneed announced the layoff on Facebook. “I did not know this was coming, but today FOX13 News management made the decision to lay me off from my position as a Freelance Anchor/Reporter,” Sneed wrote, and described it as a financial decision. Sneed added that the job came “under previous management with promises that were never fulfilled.” Sneed had joined the station in March after about a year away from television news, with earlier stops in Columbus, Chicago and Huntsville.
The station has not tied the decision to the interview. A FOX13 representative told Unapologetically Memphis it was an HR issue and declined to say more. A source familiar with the situation told the same outlet it involved a private matter, not the exchange with Blackburn. Neither the station nor Sneed has said the interview was the reason, and nothing published shows that it was.
That is the station’s strongest argument, and it stands until someone shows otherwise. But the timing is what viewers saw. Thousands commented in support of Sneed, and some called for a boycott. A station that wants the public to believe the questioning had nothing to do with it can say more than “HR issue”: whether the position was cut, whether anyone else was let go, and who made the call.
Freelancers have no contract to fall back on, which is why a clear account matters. Blackburn has promised Black Tennesseans an open door. Whether the next reporter who asks her “How?” still has a job to ask it is a question FOX13 can answer today.
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