Which makes him stupid and thoughtless rather than disobedient or insubordinate. Not much of a defence.
Pretty much all the media folks I know about have taken advantage of corporate tax-rates and are 'employed' as independent contractors through personal service corporations. I don't see how that changes anything but the paperwork technicalities of the case. 'Independent' or not, it's naive in the extreme to show up in a competitor's factory and help out without expecting some negative blowback from the guy you have your own contract with. And as to that, all the media contracts I'm familiar with provide for termination on one weeks notice, at the producer's sole discretion.
Of course it's about what he said, but had he said it in the Green Room or over dinner, no one would care. Helping FOX harvest its millions of eyeballs on their feed instead of Bell Media's … ? Certainly they care, and have every right to.
As a self-described opinion-journalist, it should have been one of the first thoughts he had when he got the invite.