OP sounded like a muckraking moron, a wanna-be Michael Moore. If you go around interviewing people with an agenda and you get to re-cut the footage however you

OP sounded like a muckraking moron, a wanna-be Michael Moore. If you go around interviewing people with an agenda and you get to re-cut the footage however you like, it's possible to get it to seem to support whatever conclusion you want it to - that's why they wanted the tape back. If this guy wants to make a video "as a personal project" to "deal with race and class issues", whatever that means, he should do this entirely on his own, not as a part time project while employed at Google using any Google resources. It's clear from his tone that OP has a point of view he wants to push - he wants to feel aggrieved at oppression, whether or not there is any. Given that OP was dumb enough to do things the way he did it's not clear he's smart enough to understand that he's being a moron. In this litigious culture, firing OP was a good idea and explaining to OP why he was being a moron wasn't necessarily a good idea. Besides, "some folks, if they don't know, you can't tell 'em."