Cenk Uygur Calls Former TYT Reporter’s Racial Discrimination Complaint “Baseless”

Andrew Jerrell Jones, a former reporter for The Young Turks (TYT) — a leading progressive digital news organization — has filed a complaint with the New York State Division Of Human Rights for racial discrimination

In the complaint, Jones, who is black, alleges that he was treated differently from his white colleagues with respect to expectations, deadlines, and travel budgets, BuzzFeed reports. Jones says he contacted TYT co-founder David Koller to relate these experiences, though they were never investigated by the company. Instead, Jones says, he received veiled threats of being terminated.

According to the complaint, Jones also says he was put on a two-week probation to evaluate his performance, but all of the story ideas he submitted during that evaluation period were rejected. Then, Jones says he was encouraged to resign with a severance deal that would prohibit him from suing the company for racial discrimination. When he refused, he was fired. Jones also claims that the company’s founder and CEO, Cenk Uygur

, told him that complaining about racial biases was a “fireable offense” and to “shut the fuck up and deal.”

“The quotes attributed to me in the workplace are completely false,” Uygur told BuzzFeed in a statement.

“I thought Andrew was a good guy when he worked here, I’ll leave comments about his work to the legal proceedings,” Uygur continued. “It’s really unfortunate that he has decided to work with a lawyer who has now brought two different, unrelated actions against us. Of course we care a great deal about diversity in the workplace — that is part and parcel of what we do and who we are. We will defend our record and not give into baseless demands.”