Des Moines Register Fires Brooklyn Buzzfeed Scalp-Hunter

A #CancelCulture Warrior got canceled. How sad.

But the Des Moines Register is doing damage control and dishonestly spinning for itself here.

We hear you. You're angry. Here's what we are doing about it.

We took appropriate action because there is nothing more important in journalism than having readers' trust.

The Des Moines Register staff has heard from hundreds of people in the past few days upset over our handling of a story on Carson King, the 24-year-old whose Busch Light sign on ESPN's "College GameDay" show launched more than a million dollars in donations to an Iowa children’s hospital.

We've listened with an open mind to everyone, but especially Iowans, the people who are our neighbors, who care as much as we do about our state and everyone who lives here.

And we hear you: You're angry, you're disappointed and you want us to understand that.

I want to be as transparent as possible about what we did and why, answer the questions you’ve raised and tell you what we've learned so far and what we'll try to do better. For one, we’re revising our policies and practices, including those that did not uncover our own reporter's past inappropriate social media postings. That reporter is no longer with the Register.

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The Register reporter writing the profile had discovered the tweets on King’s public timeline earlier in the day, and he asked King about them. King, to his credit, expressed immediate regret.

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You've asked instead why we chose to look into King's tweets in the first place. Some of you then noticed questionable tweets by the reporter himself, which the Register then began to investigate.

I’ll discuss some of the steps in our decision-making later. But rest assured, we’re examining all of our processes with fresh eyes. In response to this week’s conversations, we're focused on:

Our policies for backgrounding individuals in stories, with particular attention to acts committed by juveniles and to the newsworthiness of that information years later.

The shift in social media culture and how activities on those platforms reflect upon a person’s newsworthiness in general.

Our screening policy and social media vetting for employees.

Some of you wonder why journalists think it’s necessary to look into someone’s past. It's essential because readers depend on us to tell a complete story.

In this case, our initial stories drew so much interest that we decided to write a profile of King, to help readers understand the young man behind the handmade sign and the outpouring of donations to the children’s hospital. The Register had no intention to disparage or otherwise cast a negative light on King.

In doing backgrounding for such a story, reporters talk to family, friends, colleagues or professors. We check court and arrest records as well as other pertinent public records, including social media activity. The process helps us to understand the whole person.

There have been numerous cases nationally of fundraising for a person experiencing a tragedy that was revealed as a scam after media investigated the backgrounds of the organizer or purported victim.

As journalists, we have the obligation to look into matters completely, to aid the public in understanding the people we write about and in some cases to whom money is donated.

This is all bullshit designed to evade -- not answer -- the question: if such "routine background checks" are necessary for every non-journalist who happens to stumble into the public discussion, why aren't such "routine background checks" necessary for journalists?

Why aren't all of their social media posts vetted? Their divorce histories? Affairs? Their drug use? Their arrest records?

Who's doing blow and fucking someone else's spouse in the back room? We know you guys all know.

Matt Lauer was an open secret.

If the public needs such information to judge whether or not to trust a 24 year old fundraiser, then how can the media deny us such information about the crucial, vital Firefighters of the Media? How can we evaluate their stories without having a full Routine Background Investigation appended to every article they write?

They won't answer that, of course. Because they're a Guild who asserts the Absolute Right to attack and destroy any non-journalist citizen in the world, but which shrieks "We are the press! We need to be protected!" when the same treatment is suggested for them.

They're currently shrieking merely about criticism -- true criticism, as they full well know. They know they're liberal. But if high-ranking Republicans say they're crusading liberal partisans -- which they know they are; they give each other awards in recognition of this -- they shriek that we're "endangering the press" and trying to "chilling the First Amendment."

And meanwhile, they just keep adding to their bloody pile of citizen scalps.

They really do believe -- and intend to codify it as law -- that the First Amendment exists only for the credentialed liberal professional class. They're just hesitant to say it until they're sure they have the power to impose that law.

posted by Ace of Spades at 12:26 PM

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