Reporter Fired in the 'Busch Light Guy' Scandal Feels 'Abandoned' by Paper | Hacker News Reader

Reporter Fired in the 'Busch Light Guy' Scandal Feels 'Abandoned' by Paper

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15 pointsjawns14 comments

The real villain here is outrage culture and rampant unchecked political correctness. It's our modern day version of the witch hunts of yore.

People make mistakes, and nobody is perfect. That doesn't mean that they are evil or despicable and deserve to be burned at the proverbial stake.

Things are rarely black and white. Why is it so hard to acknowledge that fact?

I still don't really have much pity for the reporter. Live by the sword, die by the sword

I've been thinking all morning what I want to say to this and ya beat me to it.

This reporter was the one to dig up the "dirt" on Carson. It's 100% false that the DSM register pushed him to do this through "editorial practice", although the paper did allow it through so they're as much to blame on this as he is. I've been following this closely and I really think Aaron has a huge chunk of responsibility in this matter.

If you put someone under a microscope don't be surprised when the same happens to you - play stupid games win stupid prizes.

Not sure what all is involved in “outrage culture”, but I would certainly think to add that social media thrives on anecdote, and emotions over reason. At the far end, sensational clickbait gets likes and reposts. The wheels are greased for quick reactionary comments to these posts, which in turn is the measure of a story/author’s impact. All at incredible speed and reach—our communication medium is more the mold of our culture than anything we would wish to say to the world and for all time.

We should all learn to think differently about what it means to be ‘fired’ or ‘terminated’. If you’re at the bottom of an organization, if you’re freelance or contractor, if you dare to have a personal opinion, ethics or a difficult moral compass (heterogeneous society) then you’re bound to be fired at some point in your career.

From what I know of the original story, there was no need to reveal the tweets. Do the work, but why expose this side? The story was such a pretty little package—beer guy uses internet to get free beer. Gets too much, and does something good. Everybody confirms doing good is good. Governor declares, ‘Do a good deed without even trying’ day. Reporter throws cold water on the scene, and is fired.

Anheuser-Busch and Venmo missed a huge opportunity. What they should have said is "this is exactly what people should do - apologize for their youthful transgressions - move on and raise $1M for charity - we support him"

Maybe we should all stop digging around in social media to find things people said and quote them out of context...

Maybe social media should really sit down and think about their "growth" above all else model.

How about twitter use their $$ and do some machine learning and start warning me about risky tweets.

That wouldn't do them well for engagement. They want this sort of stuff to happen, and we all have to admit to ourselves that when we join these platforms that WE are the product.

Based on the paper's own statement about the situation, it was the paper's management that told him to do this search, and when he found posts made as a minor, he presented them to the paper's management who made the decision that the posts were relevant and ordered the reporter to publish the posts despite his own misgivings about it. They then pilloried him when it all blew up in their faces, and sacrificed him, but it was management that steered the entire affair and made the decision to publish.

For some reason the management is reluctant to fire themselves for their shameful and unprofessional behavior, which is the appropriate action at this point. It's distasteful that management is now denying their own culpability and setting out a scape-goat given they not not only previously admitted their culpability, but self-righteously bragged about it in an open letter to subscribers.

Any journalists considering working for this paper in the future will likely carefully consider the risk of working for someone who orders you to to unethical things, then when that backfires, destroys your entire professional career in order to protect their own bad decisions from themselves.

> “...it was the paper’s management ... who made the decision the posts were relevant and ordered the reporter to publish...”

That is not what the article says happened:

>> “Calvin said his editors told him to ask King about the tweets, so he did. [...] In writing his profile, Calvin said he decided to include just a ‘brief mention of these tweets...’.“

I'm going by actual original sources, which I named: the paper's official initial statement written by Senior Editor Carol Hunter about what happened and the timeline. Not the yellow journalism and factually incorrect Buzz Feed summary OP gave and which you quoted, and were fooled by.

It's just as I summarized. The reporter approached management. A discussion between editors ensued. And "Register editors" made the decision to include the angle about the posts as a minor, claiming that the posts were relevant and should be disclosed in the article for the benefit of anyone who has "donated money to King's cause or were planning to do so". Then then boldly summarized and justified their decision as "rooted in what we perceive as the public good".

Please provide a link, or bibliographic reference.

I was thinking about how far back should you really have to explain yourself. I think half your age plus 7 might work alright. [1] In this case, he would have had to explain if he tweeted such things past age 19. I want to emphasize this is only for simple word posts. If you ever post about actually harming someone or animals, the standard may need to be different.

For everyone who doesn't live in Iowa, how big of a story is this? Do you know people without Iowa connections who have donated? Ever since it all started, it's been a constant stream in my Facebook feed, often consisting of people commenting who haven't read the story.

And yes, Busch Light is as popular as people are making it seem. An old roommate literally had a fridge full after Hy-Vee, the Iowa-based grocery store, had a semi sale for various meats and Busch Light.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_disparity_in_sexual_rela...

I like the notion, but I don't think there's a simple "age / 2 + 7" rule that applies here as I think this sort of stuff should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

I think it's all about personal responsibility for everyone involved. Content creator, and audience. I think that creators (even just posting comments) have responsibility to keep their noses clean or suffer potential consequences, and I think that the audience has a responsibility to think about circumstances like this objectively.

There was social support for Carson from every type of person you can imagine. Young, old, left, right, every race, etc. When presented with the facts, everyone jumped on Carson's side. We saw it for what it was: a character assassination that had nothing to do with the actual story at-hand. Aaron, and the DSM Register alike ("content creators"), wanted the controversy or they wouldn't be digging that far back on someone and/or including something this irrelevant in their story. When you operate this way it's bound to backfire at some point. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

The "audience" looked at this and almost unanimously decided that the DSM Register and Aaron's actions were reprehensible. These entities took a cheap shot at someone who is objectively putting good into this world and paid a real price in subscriber numbers and employment. I don't have any pity for either of them.

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