There has been a growing trend at legacy media organizations where progressive staffers ignite a war with their employers over an editorial position that does not align with their own. 

Among the most memorable clashes in recent years include the social media revolt by New York Times staffers over the infamous Tom Cotton op-ed in 2020 and the open attacks by CNN employees over the network's Trump town hall in 2023.

In 2024, that trend exploded across multiple news outlets. These were the biggest newsroom revolts of the year:

NBC News was engulfed in a firestorm fueled by its own staffers after the network announced in March it had hired former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel as a contributor.

The practice of major news organizations hiring ex-lawmakers, government officials and political insiders has existed for decades and has largely been non-controversial. But a chorus of NBC talent, particularly from its liberal cable arm MSNBC, publicly disavowed McDaniel's hiring, citing her alleged actions in trying to block the certification of Michigan's election results in 2020.

"We weren’t asked our opinion of the hiring, but if we were, we would have strongly objected to it for several reasons including, but not limited to, as lawyers might say, Ms. McDaniel’s role in Donald Trump’s fake elector scheme and her pressuring election officials to not certify election results while Donald Trump was on the phone," MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said on "Morning Joe." 

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Rachel Maddow, MSNBC's biggest star, blasted NBC's "inexplicable" decision to hire McDaniel and expressed hope that the network would reverse its decision.

Several among the network's liberal talent, including Chuck Todd, Nicolle Wallace, Joy Reid and Jen Psaki, also spoke out against the move. Todd memorably fumed on "Meet the Press" after colleague Kristen Welker interviewed McDaniel, in what turned out to be her only appearance as a contributor.

"I think our bosses owe you an apology for putting you in this situation, because I don't know what to believe," he said.

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Just four days after NBC News announced McDaniel's hiring, she was terminated. 

"There is no doubt that the last several days have been difficult for the News Group," NBCUniversal News Group Chairman Cesar Conde told staff in a memo. "After listening to the legitimate concerns of many of you, I have decided that Ronna McDaniel will not be an NBC News contributor."

Conde acknowledged McDaniel's hiring had undermined the goal of a "cohesive and aligned" newsroom and offered an apology to his staff. 

"I want to personally apologize to our team members who felt we let them down," Conde wrote. "While this was a collective recommendation by some members of our leadership team, I approved it and take full responsibility for it."

In October, the left-wing staff at CBS News lashed out at their colleague, "CBS Mornings" co-host Tony Dokoupil, over his tough but civil interview exchange with progressive author Ta-Nehisi Coates. 

Dokoupil, who is Jewish and has children living in Israel, grilled Coates, whose new book "The Message" is harshly critical of Israel and has been rebuked by the Jewish state's defenders for its shallow analysis of a complicated conflict.

"The content of that section would not be out of place in the backpack of an extremist," Dokoupil told Coates about one portion about his trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories, asking him "Why leave out so much" and "What is it that so particularly offends you about the existence of a Jewish state that is a Jewish safe place?" 

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CBS leadership reassured offended staff members that following a review, they concluded that the interview did not meet the company’s "editorial standards," the Free Press reported, which obtained audio of the staff meeting. 

While a source familiar with the matter told Fox News Digital that Dokoupil would not be punished over the interview, he was forced to meet with the network’s in-house Race and Culture Unit following complaints. According to The New York Times, the conversation "focused on Mr. Dokoupil’s tone of voice, phrasing and body language" during the interview.

The New York Post also reported that Dokoupil expressed regret to staffers at a meeting, with one network insider describing it, "There were tears. [People were] very upset."

Some have rallied in his defense, like CBS News legal correspondent Jan Crawford, who went to bat for him during a network conference call, and Shari Redstone, chair of CBS News' parent company Paramount Global, who called the network's handling of Dokoupil a "mistake." CBS CEO George Cheeks issued a memo standing by the news network's leadership. 

Some of the country's most prominent newspapers made their own headlines by ending their decades-long practice of endorsing presidential candidates. 

The Los Angeles Times kicked off the movement with a decision made by its owner, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong for the paper to not make any endorsement in the 2024 race. Upset that they couldn't formally put their support behind Vice President Kamala Harris, that led to a slew of resignations, including by Times editorials editor Mariel Garza and editorial board members Robert Greene and Karin Klein.

Times columnist Harry Litman offered his resignation in December, citing the paper's "shameful capitulation" to Trump after Soon-Shiong made overtures to moderate the paper, like bringing aboard conservative commentator Scott Jennings to its revamped editorial board. 

Days after the Times, The Washington Post announced it would no longer make endorsements in presidential races. The paper's billionaire owner Jeff Bezos halted the editorial board's planned endorsement of Harris as well – the Post had endorsed the Democrat in every presidential election since 1976 except for when it omitted any endorsement at all in 1988.

That move sparked an avalanche of outrage from the Post's union to its prominent columnists, 20 of whom signed an open letter denouncing the paper's decision. Multiple editorial board members stepped down, and the Post's editor-at-large Robert Kagan resigned. 

Not only did the Post suffer internal bleeding, it sparked a boycott movement among its liberal readers. The paper reportedly lost 250,000 paid subscribers as a result, and it was already on track to lose $77 million this year. 

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Bezos penned an op-ed defending the decision, citing growing distrust in the media. 

"We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement," Bezos wrote. "Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion. It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility."

"By itself, declining to endorse presidential candidates is not enough to move us very far up the trust scale, but it’s a meaningful step in the right direction. I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it. That was inadequate planning, and not some intentional strategy," Bezos later conceded. 

Just days before James Dean’s first movie premiered, the actor reportedly paid off a disgruntled male lover who threatened to expose their relationship.

The agreement, which remained a secret for seven decades, is unveiled in a new book, "Jimmy: The Secret Life of James Dean." The star died in a car accident at age 24 in 1955.

"James Dean had been blackmailed by a former lover," author Jason Colavito claimed to Fox News Digital about the "Rebel Without a Cause" icon.

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"He had met a man named Rogers Brackett who was an advertising executive and radio show producer way back when he was just starting his career," Colavito explained.

"The two of them had a relationship, according to Rogers Brackett. It was a loving relationship, and they were partners. They lived together. He provided Dean with a great amount of help and assistance in getting his career started. [But] their relationship fell apart."

According to Colavito, the two men met in 1951. At the time, Dean, an Indiana native, was working as a parking valet. Colavito claimed that Brackett introduced Dean to several prominent people in the film industry, kicking off his Hollywood career.

Dean, struggling financially, reportedly took a smitten Brackett’s offer to move in with him. The relationship became tumultuous with Brackett saying of Dean years later that he was "like a child" who "behaved badly just to get attention." Meanwhile, Dean saw Brackett as "increasingly desperate" and "manipulative," Colavito wrote.

The relationship, which was on and off, lasted until about 1953, Colavito claimed.

"There were many reasons that the relationship between James Dean and Rogers Brackett soured," said Colavito. "One of the reasons was that James Dean simply wasn’t comfortable being in a relationship with a man. 

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"This was the first time that he had been in such a relationship, and it moved very fast. They went from meeting each other to living together in a matter of weeks. And according to the stories that Dean’s friends later told, James Dean felt overwhelmed by it."

"It was simply too much," Colavito continued. "He felt like Rogers Brackett was trying to control him, that he was acting more like a father to him than an equal." As for Dean, he felt "used," said the author.

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After the couple parted ways, Brackett seemingly disappeared from Dean’s life – at least until Dean was about to make his screen debut in 1955’s "East of Eden."

"Rogers returned, and he started sending letters and making telephone calls to James Dean’s agent demanding money," Colavito claimed. "He wanted James Dean to repay him all the money that he had spent on him during their relationship, supporting him. Things like paying for his rent, paying for his clothes, for meals, for travel. He wanted reimbursement for all of that."

Colavito claimed that at the time, Brackett had lost his job and was looking to finance an opera he wanted to produce.

"He was trying to hit up Dean for that money," said Colavito. "He knew that James Dean was about to become a huge movie star in ‘East of Eden.’ So, he timed this strategically. There are letters between James Dean’s agent, his attorney and Rogers’ attorney that show the development of this incident. It eventually rose to the level that Rogers said that he was going to sue Dean."

At the time, a homosexual relationship would have destroyed Dean’s career before it even started – and he knew it. 

Dean, feeling sexually exploited, but wanting to avoid a public scandal, reluctantly agreed to pay Brackett $800, which, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, is about $10,000 today, to "make him go away." The average salary for men at the time was about $3,400, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce.

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Colavito claimed that Warner Bros. Studio also paid Brackett a "finder’s fee."

"It was saying, ‘OK, we’ll give you credit for finding Dean and delivering his career to us if you won’t talk about him anymore,’" said Colavito. "We find that while James Dean was… filming ‘Rebel Without a Cause,’ there were a couple of days when he’s absent from the set… without explanation. 

"No one really knew what happened… That is the exact period when James Dean signs the settlement agreement and provides payment to Rogers Brackett to buy his silence."

Colavito said he made the discovery last year. At the time, the family of Jane Deacy, Dean’s New York agent with whom he shared a close bond, had sold off her archives at auction. Deacy died in 2008.

"These papers had been hidden for seven decades," said Colavito. "No one had seen them before. And they contained a huge number of revelations of things that had only been hinted at or rumored about in the past… when these papers were put up for auction… I went through all the more than 400 pages of documents."

"I was the first scholar who was able to use these materials to fully develop James Deans’s story," Colavito shared. "I purchased that settlement agreement so that it wouldn’t disappear into the ether, and it would be available for inspection and for the historical record."

For decades, Dean’s sexuality had been debated, with some claiming he was bisexual. In 2006, William Bast wrote a memoir, "Surviving James Dean," in which he claimed they had a secret relationship while Dean dated women in Hollywood. Bast died in 2015 at age 84.

According to Colavito, Brackett was dying of cancer when Ronald Martinetti interviewed him in 1974 for his book, "The James Dean Story." The stipulation was that the interview could not be published before Brackett’s death. The first edition of Martinetti’s biography was published in 1975, followed by his updated version in 1995.

Following the near-scandal, Dean moved on.

According to reports, Dean met Italian starlet Pier Angeli on the Warner Bros. lot in 1954. Colavito said that the relationship was "complicated."

"It looked like the kind of ideal young love that would be celebrated in every magazine and newspaper in America, and it was celebrated… but behind the scenes, the relationship was rather fraught," Colavito claimed.

"Pier said that at the time, she didn’t know whether she was really in love with Dean and certainly wasn’t ready to get married to anyone… We know that, at least, the first part of that was true, because she ran off with [singer] Vic Damone a few months into their relationship. They got married.

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"Being ready for marriage was probably something she was ready for, but not with Dean," Colavito added.

Colavito claimed that Dean "felt strongly" about the possibility of marrying Angeli before she said "I do" to Damone. Still, those who knew Dean claimed that his feelings for Angeli weren’t "romantic or sexual love." It was said to be more of an "emotional connection" and "a deep friendship." 

One pal even claimed that they never had "a physical relationship" and instead, the pair were often heard "arguing with one another very loudly."

Six months into their courtship, Dean asked Angeli to marry him in 1954, Vogue reported. She said yes. But two days later she turned him down after her mother reportedly forbade the union. Damone was Italian American and a Catholic. 

Dean was "devastated," according to the outlet.

Angeli and Damone parted ways in 1958. She remarried to orchestra conductor Armando Trovajoli in 1962. That marriage ended in 1969.

Angeli died in 1971 from an accidental barbiturate overdose. She was 39. According to the outlet, Angeli wrote to a friend two months before her death, "I don’t think any man can save me now. I think it may be too late. I think I was meant to live and die alone. Love is far away, somewhere deep inside of me. My love died at the wheel of a Porsche."

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Colavito said it’s "very difficult" to say for certain what Dean and Angeli’s relationship was really like.

"Stories change wildly over time," he pointed out. "Pier herself would eventually [say] that she felt that James Dean was her true love and that there had never been a more perfect union than the two of them.

"Now, she didn’t say anything like that at the time. There’s no evidence from anyone who spoke with them that there was anything like that going on during the few months that they were together."

"But over time… memories fade and people become more and more romantic about their pasts," he shared. "And because of the hardships that she had experienced in life, she came to idealize that time as her perfect lost love."