(Reuters) – The New York Mets have fired general manager Jared Porter for sending unsolicited, inappropriate text messages to a female reporter, Mets owner Steven Cohen said on Tuesday.
“We have terminated Jared Porter this morning,” Cohen said in a statement on Twitter. “In my initial press conference I spoke about the importance of integrity and I meant it. There should be zero tolerance for this type of behavior.”
The Mets had said in an earlier statement that they were internally reviewing the incident, with team president Sandy Alderson confirming that Porter had acknowledged making a “serious error in judgment”.
ESPN had reported on Monday night that Porter sent explicit, unsolicited texts and images to the reporter, citing a copy of the text history it had obtained.
The Mets confirmed Porter’s dismissal on their website.
“The Mets terminated general manager Jared Porter on Tuesday morning, hours after an ESPN report was posted Monday night about a 2016 incident in which Porter sent inappropriate text messages to a female reporter,” the team said.
Porter, 41, joined the Mets in December. The team have not yet announced his replacement.
(Reporting by Simon Jennings in Bengaluru; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
