He didn't get fired for running Carson's twitter history in the story per policy and his editor's direction. He ultimately got canned because of his own ugly social media history becoming public.
ding ding ding
He got himself fired.
He didn't get fired for running Carson's twitter history in the story per policy and his editor's direction. He ultimately got canned because of his own ugly social media history becoming public.
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.Very clever in repeatedly referring to King as a "public figure" so as to make a defamation claim practically impossible.
Very clever in repeatedly referring to King as a "public figure" so as to make a defamation claim practically impossible.
Here's my hangup, and I don't know if it's the author's fault, or the DMR. If the bringing up of King's past tweets wasn't intended to hurt him, then why were they included in the profile at all? What purpose did it serve to publish them if it wasn't to hurt him? I get that running a background check is standard practice. But publishing those tweets wasn't just following procedure. The author thought it was newsworthy and the editor let it be published. I've never heard a satisfactory answer as to why they did that.
Would there still be people angry about digging up the tweets in the first place? Sure.
Though I'd say they'd have gotten a lot of people off their back if they'd taken the approach of "not trying to ruin a good thing, we're for personal growth" instead of running the story as they did with the tweets that seemed completely out of place in a story about a guy raising millions for charity.
He seemed like a scapegoat to me. Editor should have stepped down when they decided to let him go.I think he was wrong for thinking the tweets deserved to be in the story, as the way they were included didn't contribute to the story at all. He didn't deserve to be fired over it though, because, like you said, it's ultimately the editor's decision to include that. The editors are also the ones that tell their reporters to dig into subject's social media history to seemingly look for anything controversial.
The question is what were they going to do. Just because the got scooped doesn’t change what they were going to do.I think this is mostly a moot point because of the news that occurred that day before the Register published its profile. First, as we know now, Busch Light backed out that afternoon because they learned of the tweets. Second, Carson King held his own press conference and issued his own statement that evening confirming the tweets.
So by that evening, the Register hadn't even published anything yet and the whole thing was public knowledge. They posted their profile that night around 9:30 IIRC, and if they published that without mentioning all that had happened that day, it would have been irresponsible.
The thing that nobody seems to get here is that if the Register had set out to damage Carson King, they would have led the story with the damaging part. And actually, if they had set out to damage Carson King they probably don't publish the glowing profile at all and instead focus on the damaging story.
But they didn't do that; instead they buried it and the Busch Light news near the end, almost as an afterthought.
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.
There wouldn't be a defamation case because king said the things stipulated.Very clever in repeatedly referring to King as a "public figure" so as to make a defamation claim practically impossible.
This again???? If I ever hear about this clown, The Des Moines Register, or Carson King again Im going to have a meltdown.
He made a couple decent points but agree with others that the tone of the article is pretty annoying. IF it was their standard practice then higher ups at the Register needed to be let go, or he shouldn't have lost his job. However, going back 7 years into someone's Twitter doesn't seem like standard practice to me. My money is this guy went looking for dirt and found it
There wouldn't be a defamation case because king said the things stipulated.
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.
No. He has no case. Would be dismissed before it got anywhere1) 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.
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.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."