University of Texas at Austin officials have fired longtime KUT Public Media General Manager Debbie Hiott after an alleged argument with the institution over a festival held by the station.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hiott disputed the claim that she had any contact with university officials to KUT reporters related to a festival that took place in recent weeks and claimed she was asked to resign or face termination, according to a report by the outlet.<\/a><\/p>\n This comes after UT officials had ordered the radio station to scale back its plans for an inaugural festival, which featured several key speakers, including U.S. Rep. Greg\u00a0Casar, D-Austin, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, and retiring U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin. The university cited security issues, though some speculated the move was political, according to a report by the Austin-American Statesman.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n In a written response to Austin’s NPR station, Anita L. Vangelisti, the interim dean of the Moody College of Communication, said the termination was immediate.<\/p>\n “I want to thank Debbie for the service she has provided in this role since 2019,” Vangelisti told KUT reporters. “She has been a dedicated proponent of providing news, content and music to the Central Texas community and beyond.”<\/p>\n An interim general manager would be named on Tuesday, Vangelisti said.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is a developing story. Check back for more updates.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"University of Texas at Austin officials have fired longtime KUT Public Media General Manager Debbie Hiott after an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":337761,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-337760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=337760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/337760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/337761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=337760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=337760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=337760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}