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Either old offensive tweets matter or they don't. It's as simple as that. It seems like you would carve out an exemption for the media, one you would deny to its victims.
Or maybe we could just stop doing "routine social media checks" (what a euphemism; it's oppo!) entirely.
Or maybe we could just stop doing "routine social media checks" (what a euphemism; it's oppo!) entirely.
Here's a novel thought: it's not newsworthy what a guy raising money for children's hospitals wrote on Twitter when he was 16. In fact, if discovered, it should be actively suppressed and hidden, not reported on. The public *shouldn't* have a right to know.
Crazy, I know.
Crazy, I know.
In all honesty, it's the *editor* (or however many editors that okayed the idea of discussing the kid's social media from when he was 16) who should have been fired here. This is a question of *news judgment* and judging that to be publishable or relevant is unforgivable.
Those are the people who shouldn't be working in journalism, or should cede their positions to other, more balanced people. This reporter was basically just a drone (albeit a hypocrite). You can even argue that, if it's true he was doing what DMR policy was, he lacked agency.
The DMR's stated reason for "routine social media background checks" of guys like Carson King was that they wanted to make sure he wasn't a fraudster, or had a past that might make ppl worry their $ would be misappropriated. Okay, fine. So why were his tweets as a 16yo relevant?
The answer is, of course, that they weren't. But the editors thought "hmm, this is gonna get us clicks, so go with it." They certainly didn't believe it had any bearing on the story. Pure cynicism, or an internalization of horrible new principles in internet-age journalism.
One thing I will add is that I do not, for one second, believe the @DMRegister's CYA piece when they claim that Anheuser-Busch suddenly cutting ties with Carson King on the very day the story broke had nothing to do w/the DMR's reporting. Do they really think we're that stupid?
Do they really expect us to believe it was a cosmic coincidence, that it wasn't related either to someone from the DMR contacting A-B about King's tweets, or King himself notifying them about it b/c he knew he was about to be blown up by the DMR? An insult to the intelligence.
And it undercuts my confidence in everything else they're claiming, because if they can lie to me so brazenly about the most important part of the story, who knows what else they're lying about?
