Carson King holding up his viral sign during “College GameDay”. Photo courtesy of the Washington Post.
In class, we heavily discussed the media coverage of the controversy involving Carson King and Des Moines Register reporter Aaron Calvin. In the Washington Post article, “Iowa reporter who found a viral star’s racist tweets slammed when critics find his own offensive posts”, reporter Katie Shepherd discusses how Carson King, a 24-year-old man from Iowa, held a sign that went viral asking for Venmo donations for his “Busch Light Supply” during ESPN’s “College GameDay”. King received an excessive amount of money through the app and stated that he would be donating the extra money to a local children’s hospital. Anheuser-Busch decided to partner with King and match the donations he continued to make via the app.
Shepherd goes on to explain how Aaron Calvin set out to write a profile on the local hero but found a couple of offensive tweets King had written when he was in high school. Calvin reached out to King before publishing the profile allowing King to hold a press conference stating his apologies and announcing that Anheuser-Busch had ended their partnership. In an update, below the headline of the article, Shepherd stated that Calvin had been let go from the Des Moines Register among all the controversy of the newspaper choosing to publish the headline and after critics had found offensive past tweets from Calvin, as well.
I found this story especially interesting as it discusses the gray lines of ethical journalism and the backlash those lines can cause. The first principle of the SPJ Code of Ethics is to “seek truth and report it”. In Calvin’s defense, he sought after the truth, found it, and reported it. Whether it was ethical is the question that caused so much controversy on the subject as critics were angry that the Des Moines Register had taken someone seen as a hero and portrayed a bad lighting on him. The next principle of the SPJ Code of Ethics is to “minimize harm”. Critics condemned Calvin because he had caused harm to King by exposing him and causing him to lose his partnership with Anheuser-Busch. However, the fourth principle of the SPJ Code of Ethics is to “be accountable and transparent”, which the Des Moines Register did. The newspaper’s executive editor published a letter on Twitter apologizing for any harm the article may have caused and explained the newspaper’s reasoning for publishing the article. In my opinion, the newspaper should not have let go of Calvin, but I understand their reasoning for it. Just as Anheuser-Busch cut ties with King for public relations purposes, the Des Moines Register did the same with Calvin.
Writing for the Media 