It's no secret that Ponyville Confidential is one of the most hated episodes. Between the harsh treatment of the CMC, the hypocrisy of the Mane 6 and the town, and Diamond Tiara getting off practically scot-free, it leaves a bad taste in many viewers' mouths. One of the main problems a lot of people pointed out in this episode was Cheerilee's absence through most of it. I've touched upon this in my AU idea for Ponyville Confidential, but here's my theory for Cherilee's absence:

Diamond Tiara knew that Cheerilee wouldn't take too well to Gabby Gums and would quickly shut it down if she got wind of it. To prevent this, she had fake newspapers printed exclusively for Cheerilee with no mention of Gabby Gums anywhere. Cheerilee, none the wiser took the bait, and Diamond Tiara was free to print what she pleased.

It might not save the episode, but I feel it's a reasonable explanation.

This post deserves more up votes.

7684182
Personally, I always felt like she should've been fired/dismissed from her job for letting D.T. cause all this trauma for the C.M.C.'s. Not to mentioned the Mane 6, along with Spike ,Mac, even D.T. & S.S. should've been (if possible) suspended off the show all together until the season after next (SEASON 4) for their conduct until they can either redeem themselves or until the fans & followers themselves FEEL like they deserve to come back. That meeting between us & them would probably go like this & if they decide to give us any unnecessary backtalk upon being served their suspension, we could tell them that they can always be FIRED & REPLACED:

7684226
I agree.

7684336
Personally, I feel like these are more reasonable punishments:
Rainbow Dash: Placed on unpaid leave from being weather manager and ordered to undergo anger management/sensitivity training
Rarity: Forced to cancel all her magazine subscriptions
Applejack and Big Macintosh: Extra farm work
Twilight: A stern lecture by Princess Celestia about the importance of communication and not assuming the worst
Diamond Tiara: Suspended, barred indefinitely from participating in anymore extracurriculars, grounded, and forced to make a public apology
Cmcs (what they did was still wrong): barred from extracurriculars for the remainder of the year.

Sadly, Cheerilee would be keeping her job in today's society, possibly with a promotion.

7684347
I still feel like the CMC's shouldn't be penalize for this. Truth be told the townsfolk kept on begging for more stories until it started targeting them & they could've prevented what happened from happening if they simply sat down with the CMC'S & talked about about what's right & wrong but instead they thought their pride & reputations was more important than family & friendship & cold-heartily turned their backs on them. That's why I feel like my idea would be more suitable for them ergo they'll have plenty of free time to focus on how to redeem themselves in the eyes of us & the CMC'S. But then again how would they take it or react if my idea did went through?

7684365
Really?

7684382
I don't think this forum is the place to get into those kinds of details, though.

7687069
No worries. B.T.W. any thought's about my top response to this forum? For that was my own opinion but what do you think?

7684182 The existence of Spoiled Rich retroactively suggests that Cheerilee may have been more or less "convinced" to let Diamond Tiara take over the school paper. And from there, Cheerilee had no authority to do anything about it until the lid had already blown off the Gabby Gums scandal, by which point the only thing she could do was go into damage control mode. After all, she promoted Featherweight even though he was a part of the blackmail scandal.

7687091
Hmm, very true. B.T.W. any thought's to my response about this forum? Undoubtedly you may have your own idea's you'd may be willing to share among the subject.

7687300 I don't think Diamond Tiara would be clever enough to print fake newspapers to cover her tracks. She was pretty open about her attempted blackmail of the CMC.

7687327
Very true once again, But I was talking about the punishment idea I had in mind for the characters I mentioned & evidence to back it up.

7687091
To be fair Featherweight is portrayed as kind of simple. It's possible he was just following orders and had no idea what the pictures were for.

7703590 Maybe. He did seem to look sorry when the embarrassing pictures of the CMC came up.

7687091
You make a decent point about why Cheerilee couldn't touch Diamond Tiara, but couldn't she have confronted the CMC over their reporting? She likely would've known they were Gabby Gums, especially considering they were the only reporters (as far as I know).

7749517 She could've, but she wouldn't have had the authority to do anything to them since she wasn't officially involved with the paper.

7684365
Keeping her job, I can understand. But promoted? What did she do that would warrant a promotion?

7854580
Belonging to a union gets you far, especially at the ballot box.

7687327
It could be possible that she blackmailed the rest of the newspaper workers into silence and/or submission. If she had dirt on the Crusaders, who's to say she didn't have dirt on the rest of the foals?