Marina Kolbe may be one of the more overqualified freelancers ever to file pieces for Georgia Public Broadcasting. She speaks French, Italian and Spanish and is a former anchor and reporter for a bevy of CNN networks. Before moving to CNN, where she worked for seven years, Kolbe was an international news anchor for the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.
Why, then, did a journalist with such an extensive national TV background find herself this year reporting and producing freelance stories for Georgia Business Report? Kolbe says the answer is simple. The 44-year-old committed the unpardonable sin in the television business: being female and not young.
Kolbe, who was born in Italy, grew up in Canada and became a U.S. citizen last year, is suing CNN (and Turner Broadcasting System and Time Warner) for violating the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, among other transgressions, when the company chose not to renew her contract in 2003 and declined to offer her freelance reporting assignments at any of its news outlets. Filed in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of Georgia two years ago, the suit is still in litigation.
"I want my job back," says Kolbe, in a phone interview during which she occasionally breaks into tears. Lamenting that many in the generation of women who fought to get into the TV news business in the 1970s and '80s are now at an age when they're being cast aside by employers, she says, "I cannot describe how depressing this has been for me. All your life, you hear about the American dream, and you come here and work hard, and you're 40 and an executive with a company making a good salary, and you've paid all your dues, but you're too old."
Jon Klein, president, CNN/U.S., declined to comment on Kolbe's lawsuit, noting that he was not at the company when she was working for CNN, CNN International and the now-defunct CNNfn. Klein says age discrimination is not practiced at the network today. (An earlier era at CNN was chronicled last year …
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