Braiden Bell, 29, was announced Thursday morning as the new television play-by-play voice of the Portland Trail Blazers.
On Thursday night, the NBA franchise announced it was moving on from Bell after discovering several offensive social media posts he wrote when he was a teenager.
“The Portland Trail Blazers have zero tolerance for racist, sexist or prejudiced comments,” the team said in an official statement posted on social media. “The social media posts made by our recently announced play-by-play broadcaster are a blatant violation of team and league policies, as well as our values and expectations. Therefore, we will not be moving forward with this broadcaster.”
The offending tweets from 2012 and 2013 were first discovered by KGW reporter Devon Haskins.
“KGW was reporting a story on the tweets Thursday afternoon and reached out to the Blazers for comment,” the initial report said. “The team responded a few hours later, saying they had fired Bell.”
The KGW report noted that it found “no offensive tweets from Bell after he became an adult.”
The whole situation sparked a firestorm of criticism over the way it unfolded. Some felt the racist and misogynistic messages crossed the line. Others felt it was unreasonable to hold Bell responsible for what he said when he was 14 and that he deserved a chance to explain or apologize before losing his job over it.
Things got even more complicated when critics dug into Haskins’ social media history and found his own posts offensive. Haskins and KGW deputy news director John Tierney, who also helped report the initial story, removed contact information from their X profiles, likely because they were inundated with negative reactions to the report. Haskins then deleted his X profile completely.
According to Matthew Keys of TheDesk.net, TEGNA, owner of KGW-TV, has launched an internal review of the report.
“The investigation focuses on whether KGW-TV (Channel 8, NBC) and its two reporters, news director John Tierney and sports reporter Devon Haskins, followed the company’s editorial processes in researching and reporting a story involving social media posts made by former WNBA sports broadcaster Braiden Bell,” Keys wrote.
Were Haskins and KGW wrong to go through Bell’s social media history and then write a story around it? This is up for debate and part of a larger conversation about the value (or lack thereof) of a person’s social media history, particularly before they become an adult.
Another aspect worth questioning is why did the Trail Blazers immediately fire Bell? No one asked them to take the information presented by KGW and release Bell less than a day after announcing his arrival. And if the Blazers hadn’t fired him, would that change the value of the story? Is it KGW’s responsibility to report or not report something about a public figure when it could have repercussions beyond their control?
These are some of the fundamental questions of journalism. They make for uncomfortable conversations, but they’re still worth having as we navigate new worlds where our internet footprints become longer and longer.
Gn sports
