Hundreds of members of the Washington Post’s news guild signed a letter on Monday in support of Felicia Somnez, the Post reporter who was suspended after she tweeted the Daily Beast’s detailed report on the late basketball icon Kobe Bryant’s rape case.
Washington Post: "All the News That’s Fit to Print (as long as it doesn’t upset anyone…)"
Bravo Ms. Somnez! Bravo, Washington Post news guild! Speak the truth!
I’m going with Ms. Somnez and the Guild on this one. She’s suspended because she linked to a legitimate story about a public figure? Isn’t that a normal and appropriate practice of public discourse?
I was wearily reminded that major media institutions cannot be counted upon to provide a full accounting of events when I noticed that, in the multitudes of reports on Bryant’s death, I saw zero references to his sexual assault. At the time, it was covered widely. A quick check of Wikipedia refreshed many of the specifics. He settled a civil suit for what is speculated to be in the range of 2.5M.
Related: In MA there is a bill pending to stop use of NDAs and taxpayer payouts to victims of sexual abuse.
Suppression of these facts contributes to a culture where sexual assault is under reported, misunderstood and perpetuated…as long as you have a bag of cash.
That has been bothering me. All this news about Byant’s death. “We will interrupt this telecast to go to a news conference” where we will tell you nothing more than you already have heard, but no one will mention the rape case which was all over the news not that many years ago. The rape case is the only way I was familiar with his name.
Its bothering a lot of people.
But, the MSM decided immediately that they were going to make Bryant appear to be a such a paragon of virtue in every aspect of his life, that even Superman would blush in envy. And, as shown by this case, they are not going to suffer anyone trying to get in front of that train.
What Somnez did by posting negative facts about Kobe may have been rude or outside of conventional “don’t speak ill of the dead” social norms, but facts are facts.
The WP made a bigger issue out this by suspending the reporter. They should have just asked her to take it down.
A separate question is how does a newspaper editor effectively manage the tweeting of its hired journalists to avoid such faux pas?
His alleged sexual assault. If we’re talking about providing a full accounting, we should be accurate.
Also, what taxpayer payouts to victims are you talking about? Is MA trying to stop victims compensation funds from providing financial assistance to victims of sexual assault? If so, what would be the point of that?
I don’t get the reaction to her tweet at all. It is quite standard in news media obituaries to touch on all the aspects of the deceased person’s life. When Nixon died did they leave out all mention of Watergate? Likewise I recently read obituaries of Ram Dass in both the WaPo and NYT. Yes, they were on the whole positive, but they included mention of his controversial actions—even the accusation by Leary (quite likely false) that Ram Dass has tried to seduce his 15 year old son.
The idea that Kobe’s sexual assault case is not a legitimate part of his life story is bizarre.
"But it’s also difficult, I imagine, for all of the survivors in the country to see these allegations essentially be erased, which is how I felt in those couple of hours in the newsroom.”
Erased? Dude was tried and found innocent. This isn’t what happened with Kavanaugh and it’s way past time for people to start accepting that not everything can just be carelessly thrown into the same category in order to help push an agenda. IT actually does damage to pushing the agenda when people do that. Differences, even when nuanced, matter. If your attitude is that the accusation should equal the conviction and remain a permanent scarlet letter and stigma, even continuing beyond investigation, trial and a jury saying it didn’t happen, then you need to be checked.
Well it becomes a comment in this situation, and it’s something I certainly never knew anything at all about, suspect many other people didn’t either, so there’s that too and I can’t say the posting was not insensitive. But suspend her? Death threats? I don’t think so. It is, however, the climate we live in now.
had posted a link to the Daily Beast’s report.
A competitor. There’s the problem, right there.
Dude reportedly paid a 2.5 million settlement for civil suit. Dude’s lawyers trumpeted the name of the 19 year old accuser all over the media and fed same lurid stories about sexual and psychiatric history of accuser. Accuser stopped cooperating with police, and case was dropped, so he wasn’t, in fact, “tried and found innocent”.
Great basketball player. Not so great human being.
Yes, I know. I was improvising…
Also true. But that still doesn’t make the case that when he died horribly, along with his 13 year old daughter and 7 others dying horribly, the first move we should make is “look look here’s my agenda and I’m going to use this to push it!!!” Fuck that noise. It’s consistently the type of shit WE do on our side of things that keeps civility from being even remotely possible. No, it’s not too much to ask people to have a little respect for the freshly dead. You think his dead daughter wanted him smeared the day they died? WTF is wrong with people?
That’s a strong word. It’s just a report, not an indictment. Also, people talk about public figures when they died. Why would we bring up such things at other times?
Thanks for the link.
Personally, even without that allegation, I thought people went overboard with their sports figure worship.
Dude was a basketball player worth about 600 million.
He worked for and earned his success. Good for him.
It’s not like he was a Mother Teresa or Gandhi.
Still, I think that rape story could have waited a week or at least until after the burial services.
Then again, Ted Kennedy was trashed pretty much from the day he died. Still can’t believe how conservative leaning papers trashed him and printed all the odious comments from the day he died onward.
