George Murphy is out at ABC News' Nightline, though it is not clear whether he was fired or will be allowed to resign.
The Nightline senior director has not been at work for several weeks after ABC found out he was endorsing the Sony Vegas editing system, including during a planned session at the NAB convention in Las Vegas last month. At the time, the company called it an "unfortunate situation" that it was reviewing.ABC just signed a big deal with Avid for its editing equipment, which the Nightline crew has been transitioning too. There is also a written policy against product endorsements.
Murphy was pulled from the NAB conference agenda and an online story in which he sang the praises of the Vegas system disappeared from at least one techie Web site at about the same time. Though the story, Nightline is the Right Line for Sony Vegas, was still around on videoguys.com, including a picture of
Murphy was also selling Sony products through an online "software superstore," according to the bio for his aborted NAB session.ABC had no comment.
