Reporter who found Carson King’s offensive tweets fired for own tweets

In an unfortunate twist, a reporter for the Des Moines Register who received immense online backlash for finding old, offensive tweets from a local hero that resulted in him losing a corporate partnership for charity has been fired from his newspaper job.

Aaron Calvin, 27, told BuzzFeed News that he wishes his employers had “believed” in him, but tension that bubbled up among Twitter users appeared to force the paper’s hand after dealing with death threats from those who were angry that old, offensive tweets had been reported on at all.

How a profile of a local hero turned resulted in him losing a corporate partnership for free beer

Carson King, a 24-year-old casino security guard, turned a moment of viral fame into an opportunity to raise over $2 million for his local children’s hospital after ESPN cameras captured him at an Iowa State University football game holding a humorous sign asking for beer money to be sent to his Venmo account.

ESPN aired King and his sign on “College GameDay,” a pre-show broadcast, and donations for free beer came pouring into King’s account on the money-sharing app. King told CNN he received more than $400 in less than 30 minutes.

On Twitter, King announced that he would donate all of the money he received to the Stead Family Children’s Hospital in Iowa City. As money poured in, Venmo announced it would match any donations King received. King specifically requested the beer Busch Light, and maker Anheuser-Busch offered to send King a free year’s supply of the beer once he surpassed the $1 million mark.

Read more: The paper that reported on the Busch Light guy’s racist tweets had to hire security because they’re getting violent threats

King then rose to prominence as a local hero, with beer cans made with his face on them and a local ice cream store planning to name a Busch Light flavor after him.

Amid the excitement, the Des Moines Register assigned its reporter, Calvin, write a profile of King.

In the course of reporting, Calvin examined King’s social media profiles, where he found old, offensive tweets, including one that compared black mothers to gorillas and another that made light of black people who died during the Holocaust.

Calvin decided to publish a brief explanation of the tweets he found at the bottom of his article and notified King before publication. King apologized for the tweets, which Calvin included – but before running the article, King also began to apologize for his old tweets in advance, including in a written statement he posted to Twitter.

In light of the tweets, Anheuser-Busch retracted the partnership and the offer to send King a year’s worth of free beer. The charity donations were not impacted. However, the ensuing attention created a firestorm online.

After King’s old tweet resurfaced, an anti-cancel culture mob turned on Calvin for his reporting

Many critics, both in and outside of Iowa, saw Calvin’s reporting as an example of cancel culture, a term that has found roots as a wide array of both public and private figures have faced consequences after old and offensive social media posts are resurfaced.

As Calvin explained to BuzzFeed News, a horde of negative online attention then came his way, including efforts to reveal his address and other personal information, along with death threats. Most of the negative attention stemmed from libertarian and alt-right online communities – the anti-cancel culture movement has largely been championed by conservatives.

Read more: YouTubers are calling out the platform’s ‘cancel culture’ that subjects them to a rampant hate mob and sees them lose thousands of subscribers in a matter of hours

“I was trying to do my job as a reporter”

Calvin disagreed that he was attempting to “cancel” King in the first place.

“I was never trying to hold Carson to any kind of ‘higher standard’ or any kind of standard at all,” Calvin told BuzzFeed News. “I was trying to do my job as a reporter, and I think I did so to the best of my ability.”

Regardless of intent, the mob was able to find old, offensive tweets written by Calvin, too. Those tweets were directed toward the Des Moines Register and the company that owns it, Gannett.

Representatives for Gannett called Carson, who had been asked to vacate his home in light of the death threats, and gave him the choice to either resign or be fired. He chose to be fired. The executive editor of the Register explained the decision, as well as the editorial decisions leading up to the reporting in the first place, in a lengthy editorial.

“Until readers called to our attention some inappropriate posts from several years ago, the Register was unaware of them,” executive editor Carol Hunter wrote. “We took appropriate action because there is nothing more important in journalism than having readers’ trust.”

Neither Aaron Calvin, Carson King, nor the Des Moines Register immediately responded to Insider’s request for comment.