Liz Wahl, Former RT News Anchor, Quits and Prospers

For as long as there have been jobs, paychecks, and bosses, there have been workers fantasizing about a glorious exit. Not just quitting, but tendering a resignation so full of indignation, unleashed with such certitude, that the world is forced not only to take note of your righteous integrity but also of your ex-employers’ gross deficiencies—their moral failures, their hypocrisy, their pathetic dental plan. For most, the heroic resignation is a daydream. Not so for Liz Wahl, 28, who recently quit her way into global prominence.

When Wahl joined RT—Russia’s state-sponsored English-language news network—in September 2011 as a correspondent based in Washington, she had high hopes of doing serious journalism. But Wahl says over the next two-and-a-half years she grew disillusioned, coming to believe that the network was little more than a gussied-up propaganda machine for the government. In late February, when Russian forces invaded Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, things got worse. Wahl grew increasingly uncomfortable with RT’s one-sided coverage of the crisis and its glowing hagiography of Russian President Vladimir Putin. On a Wednesday in March, Wahl decided not just to resign but to do it in dramatic fashion, on live TV.