Phil Donahue lost his job at MSNBC for vocally opposing the Iraq War. An internal memo at MSNBC revealed that they saw Donahue as a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war".

According to Donahue:

They were terrified of the antiwar voice. And that is not an overstatement. Antiwar voices were not popular. And if you’re General Electric, you certainly don’t want an antiwar voice on a cable channel that you own; Donald Rumsfeld is your biggest customer.

It really is funny almost, when you look back on how—how the management was just frozen by the antiwar voice. We were scolds. We weren’t patriotic. American people disagreed with us. And we weren’t good for business.

Chris Hedges also lost his job at The New York Times for publicly denouncing the Iraq War after they formally reprimanded him. He was booed off a stage and had his microphone cut twice for delivering an antiwar speech.