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Comment by creaghpatr | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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

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.

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 At that point they could have left it out of their yet unpublished piece.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.

Note: I definitely don't hold it against him for going public. And the fact that he felt the need to do so suggests to me either he is an extremely stand-up guy, and/or the reporter asked him about it made it seem inevitable that the tweets would be written about.

> To me, that seems like the definition of digging for dirt.

Again, my opinion (and limited past experience) only, but I think the easy and quick mechanics of tweet-searching makes it a routine check and not "digging for dirt". Just like how Google and court searches can be done in a few seconds/minutes. When I did a cursory criminal background check for the subject of a positive news profile, it wasn't because I wanted to find dirt. It's because I don't want to put out a happy naive fuzzy article about an award-winning local business leader, only to find out via letters from victims/litigants who tell me he's the target of serious accusations/lawsuits.

Now if finding bad tweets from someone actually required collecting and reading years of tweets, that would be more akin to digging for dirt, because you have to work for it. You only put in that work when you really want to find something.

That said, if I were the DMR reporter in this case and stumbled upon those controversial tweets in my cursory check, I would've done the math in my head (i.e. King was only 16 at the time), and I would've put in the work to see if there were any recent tweets that indicate his purported bigotry is an ongoing character trait. And if I couldn't find such tweets (which seems to be the case with King), then I wouldn't even bring it up. I just wouldn't see that relevant to this kind of profile, same as I probably wouldn't find it necessary to report on or ask about minor juvenile crimes long expunged.

Thanks for explaining. I found your take here quite refreshing:

> I would've put in the work to see if there were any recent tweets that indicate his purported bigotry is an ongoing character trait. And if I couldn't find such tweets (which seems to be the case with King), then I wouldn't even bring it up.

I suppose I am genuinely curious in the details of tweet searching mechanics from an Info retrieval standpoint: Do you iterate through a list of "bad terms" to search against the subject? If so, what is your source for such list and how is it maintained?

I guess what I'm looking for, is could this be a standardized process set at the 'organizational level' - or is it a process created by individual reporters based on personal experience?

Again - genuinely curious - no snark intended.

I can't say from personal experience since I haven't had to write a profile on anyone in the time when social media backgrounding became a common thing. In terms of what things to search for, I imagine it's all subjective, just as it's subjective on what you should judge someone for (social media, criminal background, etc), but I'm sure looking for common bigoted slurs would be standard practice.

One thing worth noting: As I understand it, Mr. King's charity campaign was heavily based off of social media (after the initial appearance on ESPN GameDay) – meaning that he spread it via his own Twitter account. Which makes looking at his Twitter account and past tweets more routine, since social media is essentially a large part of his current fame/notability. For other kinds of profile subjects, such as "Teacher of the Year" or "veteran recalls memories of war on war's anniversary", I'd be surprised if reporters did a social media check. Because unless that person themself says their social media profile is a big deal, then the reporter probably won't even be aware of it.

I was going to counter-argue that hey maybe "7 years' worth of tweets" was only like a hundred tweets but no, there's more than a thousand. And since I doubt Calvin read every one, it was probably a fishing expedition for key words.

Someone on twitter made a comment along the lines of

"the reporter should have taken the tweets to Carson King and said 'hey I found these tweets you should delete them so they don't get in the way of your fundraising campaign'".

Would have been a pragmatic solution at the time.

You only do that if you care more about helping children than you care about clicks.

Isn’t that inserting yourself into the story?

It would not be part of the story.

A journalist digs into old tweets as a matter of course to find dirt. Clickbait is the norm not a dodgy tactic.

What is the matter of course? What is the point of doing the search if not to find something controversial?

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.

Reminds me of the VW emissions, blame it on a low-level engineer.

I think the editor mistakenly thought this was a now-acceptable way to make the story even bigger

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.

Well then lets do away with punishment and let everyone off with an apology.

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.

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.

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