COLUMNIST Kevin Baldeosingh has been fired as journalist with the Newsday newspaper, causing supporters of Baldeosingh to question the manner and the reasons for the firing.

Yesterday, some of them gathered outside of Newsday’s office on Chacon Street Port of Spain, and staged a silent protest in disagreement of his termination.

Tim Teemal, one such protester, said Baldeosingh received his termination letter from the newspaper allegedly because of a letter he wrote and had published in the Express on May 7.

In the letter, Baldeosingh spoke about the principles of journalism, and criticised Fr Henry Charles-the then chairman of the Integrity Commission for failing to follow these principles.

He had written: ’ I have kept files on two instances of Mr Charles’s transgressions. In a column titled ’The colour of intelligence’, published on December 24, 2007 in the Trinidad Guardian, he copied 300-plus out of 1000 words (and took four of his seven arguments) from an op-ed piece in the New York Times written on December 9 by psychologist Richard E. Nesbitt. Most recently, on April 13 2009 in a piece titled ’The financial crisis & ethics deficit’, Mr Charles lifted virtually into a column written by Catholic scholar Darrin Belousek and published in America: the National Catholic Weekly on March 30.’

Teemal, a member of the Trinidad and Tobago Humanist Association, to which Baldeosingh belongs, said the columnist did nothing wrong and insisted that Newsday was at fault.

John Borely, the organiser of the simple four-man demonstration where passers-by were asked to also show their support by signing a t-shirt on display, said, ’I want Newsday to know that there are a lot of people who won’t stand for nonsense. I just want to show support for the principle that Kevin stood for.’

When Baldeosingh was contacted yesterday, he said, he did not see it as good principle for a journalist to be fired because of writing something of public interest. He said the idea of the article was brought up before the editors of Newsday before anyone else, but they never saw it as having story value, but the Express did and had the letter published.

Chief Executive Officer of Newsday, Therese Mills could not be reached for comment yesterday.