Twitter hates me. The Des Moines Register fired me. Here’s what really happened.
- Thread starter Bigman38
- Start date
The reporter got fired for his own offensive tweets he made just recently. His "apology" was weak and then he went on to blame a bunch of other people about it shortly after. To me, he still hasn't accepted responsibility for his own tweets and is blaming everyone else for his firing.
I don't really see where a defamation claim was ever a matter at all, the source of all of this is still his tweets -- which are already proven to have factually existed. They weren't falsified.
1. He was by the time of that profile a public figure.
2. You can't sue someone for defamation when what they published was the truth.
Exactly.
Let's also not forget this crucial piece that people rarely address: how did Anheuser-Busch find out about this? They called King to tell him they were severing ties before King even knew about it.
While there are two sides to every story, I've seen enough out of Calvin to see that he's a ******* weasel. He published these tweets, which were retweets of someone else's joke, while having stuff that was MUCH worse when taken at face value in his own profile.
He's been hammering this "I'm a victim" **** the entire time. He threw the tweets in as a little blurb at the end, and not as part of some redemption arc, like he claims.
I don't think your idea would have changed the outcome one bit. There is nothing about the way people have reacted to this story to make me think that people would have made that distinction.
He seemed like a scapegoat to me. Editor should have stepped down when they decided to let him go.
The question is what were they going to do. Just because the got scooped doesn’t change what they were going to do.
As others have mentioned I think the timeline suggests that they reached out to AB in some way. They are the ones that started the whole thing. They wanted to capitalize on a great story by making needless controversy.
The end results of what happened are irrelevant. Just because the public shammed the Register doesn’t excuse the actions they took.
1) Total BS. He's just some kid with a Venmo account.
2) Defamation by implication would be the claim, and the truth of the matter would possibly be an affirmative defense (jury question though). But go right on defending the Gannett Corp.
This again???? If I ever hear about this clown, The Des Moines Register, or Carson King again Im going to have a meltdown.
There wouldn't be a defamation case because king said the things stipulated.
Not sure. For 20-somethings, social media garbage is looked at as representative of that age groups' life and beliefs. For far too many in that demographic a random post or 2 is real and used to define someone. For the vast majority of us older than that, we define a person by his actions over long periods of time taking into account the good and bad - and giving those people a pass as the older you are, the more you know our young selves generally don't resemble our older selves.
The author did what he was told to but because of his age, he felt it was part of what defines Carson - which it absolutely did not.
I'm OK with the back ground check, but I'm not OK with cherry picking reposts of a very famous comedian and using that in any way in the context of this wonderful, Iowa-centric feel-good piece.
Die rag.
From the piece that is linked: "In context, I could see that these had been references to sketches by the comedian Daniel Tosh...I approached King with an understanding that what you tweet in high school is not necessarily representative of your beliefs as an adult, and he duly apologized."
I'm not defending anyone. I'm repeating facts. Carson King himself confirmed everything in the Register story in his own statement, which he made public before the story was published. Is he going to sue himself for defamation?
As for his status as a public figure, on September 14th he was just "some kid with a Venmo account." But a week later after a ton of media coverage around the country, he was very much a public figure.
No. He has no case. Would be dismissed before it got anywhere
I read the piece. It is factually correct to say that king had offensive tweets on his timeline. Irrespective of the context. There are 4 standards you need to meet to prove defamation, I'll let you look them up... But this would check maybe 2 of them.
L
LincolnWay187
Guest
The writer got everything he deserved. I hope future employers evaluate his morals and decision making based on this
I've said all along he was the scapegoat the DMR editors used to place the blame on someone other than themselves for the whole mess that came with their decision to run a story that included something about some old and irrelevant tweets. Calvin is not 100% innocent in this as he still had a role in this article's content and while it may have still had implications on his job still he had a choice to refuse to use the old tweets as part of his story if he wanted to or taken his name off the story if he disagreed with the editor's direction. Carol Hunter and any DMR editors who gave the OK to go in this direction are the ones that really deserved to lose their jobs over the backlash it brought. The editors are the ones that are supposed to be the checkpoints to make sure content of articles are worth publishing and they failed miserably with the choice they made on this one.
This article still reads like an entitled brat who still doesn't fully understand what happened and is now playing the bitter victim card. I took a bigger issue with the offensive/disgusting tweets from his past and found that more ironic about how a writer is calling out something stupid Carson tweeted 8 years ago when Calvin himself had far worse things in his twitter history such as anti-police, jokes about same sex marriage, teaching kids about "turning tricks" and substance abuse, verbal abuse, etc. Had he not had that to deal with it may have been harder for the DMR to fire him and that just shows another poor lapse in judgement by the DMR not to know one of their own writers had issues too. That's the issue I take with him more than anything that he was basically the name writer on what same people considered a smear on Carson King while he had even worse things that exposed him as a hypocrite.
He probably should have just let this die like the DMR has been trying to do and just used this as a lesson learned and move on. I do side with him that he was made the scapegoat but he is not without fault and flaw in this whole mess either. To me it sounds like he needs to spend some time reflecting on his own past mistakes and start taking more accountability and become a better person himself. But like many in the media these days they feel they are bulletproof and don't need to apologize for anything when they are exposed.
This article still reads like an entitled brat who still doesn't fully understand what happened and is now playing the bitter victim card. I took a bigger issue with the offensive/disgusting tweets from his past and found that more ironic about how a writer is calling out something stupid Carson tweeted 8 years ago when Calvin himself had far worse things in his twitter history such as anti-police, jokes about same sex marriage, teaching kids about "turning tricks" and substance abuse, verbal abuse, etc. Had he not had that to deal with it may have been harder for the DMR to fire him and that just shows another poor lapse in judgement by the DMR not to know one of their own writers had issues too. That's the issue I take with him more than anything that he was basically the name writer on what same people considered a smear on Carson King while he had even worse things that exposed him as a hypocrite.
He probably should have just let this die like the DMR has been trying to do and just used this as a lesson learned and move on. I do side with him that he was made the scapegoat but he is not without fault and flaw in this whole mess either. To me it sounds like he needs to spend some time reflecting on his own past mistakes and start taking more accountability and become a better person himself. But like many in the media these days they feel they are bulletproof and don't need to apologize for anything when they are exposed.
