The Busch Light guy and the Des Moines Register

Gannett is probably pumped. The DMR has gained more clicks and notoriety in the past few days then since who knows when. Also someone was fired so you save that salary for a month!

 

My next rental...

Jerry Lewis is the worst. It's an empirical fact.

 

Good Luck if you know the history of that film. So bad even Jerry Lewis refused to release it.

 

I don’t agree with anyone who refers to themselves in the first person ... in caps no less.

 

I'm not sure that's strictly true.

The French Film Critic Who Saw Jerry Lewis’s Infamous Holocaust Movie—and Loved It

 

from wikipedia: So we only have to wait five more years.

Lewis repeatedly insisted that The Day the Clown Cried would never be released because it is an embarrassingly "bad work" of which he was ashamed. Despite his statements in interviews that he had arranged for the film to never be screened, there are reports that he donated a copy of the film to the Library of Congress in 2015 under the stipulation that it was not to be screened before June 2024.

 

2024!

 

Doc ... had the reporter done what you suggested, he'd almost for sure still have a job. What you bring up is an interesting point as a human being. Very intriguing. Yes the reporter had the option of telling the guy to remove offensive tweets from the past. Not everybody is of the opinion that somebody's old social media posts are news. Had the guy killed his old tweets and that somehow been discovered, would the reporter have been fired for tipping off the guy? Probably. I wonder what journalists think about what you wrote. Would it have been an option just to tell the young man/hero to kill the old tweets before somebody sees them? Or is that suddenly improper journalistic behavior, inserting you in the story.

What the Register did was suggest the tweets were no big deal just dumping in 3-4 graphs at the end of the story. If they are no big deal ... why not tip the guy off you found them and tell him he better kill them. I'm torn on this one. I would be happy with myself if I warned him, saved the guy's life so to speak, and didn't get caught for warning him.

 

The tweets had nothing to do with the story and why he is in the news, so I would have definitely given him a quick head's-up and advised he delete them before someone else found out. The way they were crow-barred into the story was clumsy and appeared completely out of place. Very much amateur hour.

I'm more interested in how Anheuser-Busch found out. The DMR said they had nothing to do with it, but the "coincidence" of the DMR discovering them, and A-B finding out, about 2 hours apart some 10 days after the kid became a name on the Gameday set, strains credibility.

I'd really like to see what the fired reporter has to say about this whole episode, what he was trained/told to do at the DMR, and how it all went down. Gotta think there are TV stations in Des Moines trying to get him to talk.

 

As a journalist, most times it is your responsibility to tell the story. However, as a human being with compassion, some times it is your responsibility to do the right thing for everyone. Tipping this kid off was the right thing to do. It helps everyone, hurts no one, and life continues on. I'm sure the DMR reporter wishes he had done this, considering where he sits now.

 

I agree with this as a matter of compassion.

I struggle with it a little as a matter of journalistic ethics.

Tough call.