5 ms·

It's not that complicated, Carson King's tweets were not newsworthy and not even remotely part of the story. By digging into the subject's background for dirt a

It's not that complicated, Carson King's tweets were not newsworthy and not even remotely part of the story. By digging into the subject's background for dirt and then leveraging that dirt to get Busch Light to cancel the relationship, Aaron Calvin inserted himself into the story, opening the door to the backlash. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

yhoneycomb 7y ago
Yeah but he had to have ran that story by an editor, and the editor approved. Right? So tired of the easiest scapegoats getting all the flak.
- mieseratte 7y ago
  Reminds me of the VW emissions, blame it on a low-level engineer.
- creaghpatr 7y ago
  I think the editor mistakenly thought this was a now-acceptable way to make the story even bigger
  - yhoneycomb 7y ago
    And I’m sure the reporter thought the same. So why was only one punished? For the record, I don’t think either should be punished as long as they give a legit apology.
    - Fjolsvith 7y ago
      Well then lets do away with punishment and let everyone off with an apology.
    - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      King posted stuff that was basically a civil discussion on /b/ circa 2012. His mistake was posting it on twitter. This is basically a normal teenage mistake. Calvin posted similar stuff more recently and while working as a reporter. This fails to meet the standard of behavior we expect adults who work in journalism to hold themselves to. Simply put, posting that kind of crap indicates he is not qualified to do his job. If he was working in a different industry it would be different (e.g. if your accountant is a neo-nazi it probably doesn't impact their ability to do their job) but the fact of the matter he is in a publicly facing role and in those kinds of roles being able to at appear neutral (or at least not too extreme) matters.
- danso 7y ago
  To be fair, the story didn't run/go to print before Carson King went public with his apology. We don't know for sure that the editors and reporter would have included the tweets in their final draft of the story.
HeXetic 7y ago
I mean to be fair, he might have dug into the old tweets just as a matter of course, not necessarily to "find dirt". Publishing them is a different story, however.
- dfsegoat 7y ago
  Going through 7 years worth of tweets? That seems excessive for a cursory "background check" of someones social media - which, according to the letter from the editors - was how they found them, and was "standard policy" [1]. That being said, I am not a journalist. So am ignorant of standards for something like this. [1] - https://twitter.com/DMRegister/status/1176705031468457985 https://twitter.com/DMRegister/status/1176705031468457985
  - danso 7y ago
    I agree that it was wrong to bring up the tweets during the reporting (the subject went public with his apology before the DMR ran their profile), but when you rhetorically ask, "Going through 7 years worth of tweets?", are you aware of how Twitter advanced search works? You don't have to "go through n years worth of tweets" – you can search by keyword and by author, and in seconds, Twitter will show you any and all tweets with that keyword, across all of time. So it's like someone asking, "You went through billions of webpages to find my homepage?", because they aren't aware of how Google is used. Yes, reading through 7 years of tweets would be a huge investment of time, but searching for keywords like "Holocaust" or the n-word is not. I haven't had to write a profile of someone in the age of social media, but back when I worked for a newspaper, I would routinely do a courts search for anyone I was doing a profile on, even for fluff profile. Not because I was looking for dirt, but because it's a process that takes a minute and prevents me from unknowingly whitewashing someone with a fluff profile.
    - dfsegoat 7y ago
      He went public after the DMR asked him about it, to get ahead of it. At that point they could have left it out of their yet unpublished piece. Absolutely fair points and I totally missed the advanced search bit - you are 100% right there. But, to that point, wouldn't it suggest even more bias if someone were simply searching: @SUBJECT_HANDLE + <RACIST_OR_SOCIALLY_UNACCEPTABLE_TERM_KEYWORD> ? To me, that seems like the definition of digging for dirt. But, I guess it depends on who's side you identify with more. I would totally be fine if they could present some sort of SOP or protocol for doing their social media background checks in a standard way. I've seen nothing like that.

yhoneycomb 7y ago

Yeah but he had to have ran that story by an editor, and the editor approved. Right? So tired of the easiest scapegoats getting all the flak.

mieseratte 7y ago
Reminds me of the VW emissions, blame it on a low-level engineer.
creaghpatr 7y ago
I think the editor mistakenly thought this was a now-acceptable way to make the story even bigger
- yhoneycomb 7y ago
  And I’m sure the reporter thought the same. So why was only one punished? For the record, I don’t think either should be punished as long as they give a legit apology.
  - Fjolsvith 7y ago
    Well then lets do away with punishment and let everyone off with an apology.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    King posted stuff that was basically a civil discussion on /b/ circa 2012. His mistake was posting it on twitter. This is basically a normal teenage mistake. Calvin posted similar stuff more recently and while working as a reporter. This fails to meet the standard of behavior we expect adults who work in journalism to hold themselves to. Simply put, posting that kind of crap indicates he is not qualified to do his job. If he was working in a different industry it would be different (e.g. if your accountant is a neo-nazi it probably doesn't impact their ability to do their job) but the fact of the matter he is in a publicly facing role and in those kinds of roles being able to at appear neutral (or at least not too extreme) matters.
danso 7y ago
To be fair, the story didn't run/go to print before Carson King went public with his apology. We don't know for sure that the editors and reporter would have included the tweets in their final draft of the story.

HeXetic 7y ago

I mean to be fair, he might have dug into the old tweets just as a matter of course, not necessarily to "find dirt". Publishing them is a different story, however.

dfsegoat 7y ago
Going through 7 years worth of tweets? That seems excessive for a cursory "background check" of someones social media - which, according to the letter from the editors - was how they found them, and was "standard policy" [1]. That being said, I am not a journalist. So am ignorant of standards for something like this. [1] - https://twitter.com/DMRegister/status/1176705031468457985 https://twitter.com/DMRegister/status/1176705031468457985
- danso 7y ago
  I agree that it was wrong to bring up the tweets during the reporting (the subject went public with his apology before the DMR ran their profile), but when you rhetorically ask, "Going through 7 years worth of tweets?", are you aware of how Twitter advanced search works? You don't have to "go through n years worth of tweets" – you can search by keyword and by author, and in seconds, Twitter will show you any and all tweets with that keyword, across all of time. So it's like someone asking, "You went through billions of webpages to find my homepage?", because they aren't aware of how Google is used. Yes, reading through 7 years of tweets would be a huge investment of time, but searching for keywords like "Holocaust" or the n-word is not. I haven't had to write a profile of someone in the age of social media, but back when I worked for a newspaper, I would routinely do a courts search for anyone I was doing a profile on, even for fluff profile. Not because I was looking for dirt, but because it's a process that takes a minute and prevents me from unknowingly whitewashing someone with a fluff profile.
  - dfsegoat 7y ago
    He went public after the DMR asked him about it, to get ahead of it. At that point they could have left it out of their yet unpublished piece. Absolutely fair points and I totally missed the advanced search bit - you are 100% right there. But, to that point, wouldn't it suggest even more bias if someone were simply searching: @SUBJECT_HANDLE + <RACIST_OR_SOCIALLY_UNACCEPTABLE_TERM_KEYWORD> ? To me, that seems like the definition of digging for dirt. But, I guess it depends on who's side you identify with more. I would totally be fine if they could present some sort of SOP or protocol for doing their social media background checks in a standard way. I've seen nothing like that.