The Des Moines Register angered Iowans of all political stripes on Tuesday. Register reporter Aaron Calvin unearthed a couple of “controversial” tweets from Carson King’s high school years.
King is the man responsible for raising millions of dollars for the University of Iowa Children’s Hospital thanks to his Busch Light/Venmo sign that appeared on ESPN.
Carol Hunter, the executive editor of the Register, put out a statement Tuesday about the situation.
“The jokes were highly inappropriate and were public posts,” Hunter said. “Shouldn’t that be acknowledged to all the people who had donated money to King’s cause or were planning to do so?”
Register editors decided to include the information at the bottom of the story.
King preempted the story by holding a press conference to own up to the posts. He showed plenty of growth and maturity in how he handled the situation.
However, many people started digging into Calvin’s social media past. Sure enough, there was plenty of fodder that fed into the Register’s hypocrisy.
“Evangelicals chose an atheist as long as he’s a racist like them, racism is their true religion, and they will not see heaven when they die.”
That was a cover photo posted by Calvin on Nov. 10, 2016.
Calvin showed plenty of animosity towards people of faith.
Calvin also clearly shows a political bias.
Calvin has some posts to his name too that show strong disregard for the police. There’s also mention of certain slurs.
Shortly after The Iowa Standard began posting some of these tweets on Facebook, Calvin’s Twitter account was set to private. Minutes later the Des Moines Register announced it is aware of reports of inappropriate social media posts by one of its staffers. The Register said an investigation has begun.
