If nobody reported on a Proud Boy rally, would that have been better? Like it or not, it’s news, and Jonathan Choe, a reporter for ABC affiliate KOMO in Seattle reported. For his efforts, he was fired. As it turned out, he reported “wrong.”
Let me start off by saying I am not a neo-Nazi, fascist, or white supremacist. Those are just some of the names I have been called over the past few days for my recent coverage of a protest in Olympia, WA. It was advertised as a “rally for America.”
And as Choe notes, he’s Asian American, which is that precarious status that puts him in the position of being easily vilified. And he was.
That is exactly why I wanted to be an observer at Saturday’s Proud Boys’ event and started live tweeting. I wasn’t taking sides. I wasn’t saying anything was good or bad. In fact, none of the marchers would talk to me on the record because they “didn’t trust the mainstream media.” So I just started following the march route. Aside from some middle fingers and heckling from those who opposed the rally, the day ended peacefully and without incident.
Would it have been better had there been a Proud Boys’ rally and no one noticed? Perhaps. There’s a fair argument to be made that the media “created” the Proud Boys better than Gavin McInnes ever could, taking a dozen pudgey losers and turning them into a group of white supremacists to be taken seriously rather than laughed at. But that was then, and now they are what they are.
In a Tweet recapping the day, I decided to create a photo montage with natural sound from the march(in TV news this is what’s called a “NAT Pkg”). One of my videos picked up music blasting from a speaker strapped over the shoulder of one of the protesters. I could not make out the words and had never heard this song in my life. You could also hear car horns and the footsteps of marchers as I weaved in and out of the crowd. I laid some photos over this natural sound from the video and hit send.
Of course, someone out in the ether assumed that Choe added in the music, which someone figure out was racist music, and so the pile on commenced.
I later learned the song is called “We’ll Have Our Home Again,” and is sometimes played at white nationalist rallies. This piece was never meant to air on KOMO News and it never did. I wanted it to be a conversation starter, and it sure did incite an unexpected response. In hindsight, I wish I added more context to this Tweet. But before I could clarify or respond to the criticism, my news director told me to take down all my social media related to the Proud Boys march. I was also told by my boss not to speak to any outside media. The following day, I was fired from KOMO.
The problem for Choe wasn’t that he covered the rally, or twitted about it, but that he did so in a way that failed to villify them sufficiently.
My problem arises when any group or side tries to silence me for simply trying to show what’s happening. At the end of the day, all I can do is shine a light on issues that matter to the community. Fairly and accurately.
Some might well argue that it wasn’t “fair and accurate,” since the Proud Boys are evil and it’s unfair and inaccurate to report on them in a way that doesn’t provide “moral clarity” so that it’s clear they are bad dudes. After all, if they’re bad, any reporting that doesn’t make them look bad can’t, by definition, be fair. Then again, as the march was peaceful, what was Choe supposed to do to turn his reporting on this “hate group” into something worthy of hate?
But more to the point, Choe was fired for what happened here. Outside of local news, his name won’t mean much, and his story may not make it onto the radar of important writers at big city newspapers. He won’t be a cause célèbre. But he will be a cautionary tale for other reporters who might choose to report the news without the bias demanded by the ever-vigilant on social media. Some might argue that Choe’s been canceled, although we’re reliably informed that it’s just consequences for reporting news without ideological taint.
As for “examples” demanded to show that this phenomenon is real, Jonathan Choe may well be forgotten as he lacked the national profile to matter to the most fervant deniers, but it matters a lot to him, as it should. And it should matter to you as well, so you appreciate why reporters may feel compelled to color their journalism to keep their job.
H/T Hal
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