ESPN suspended reporter Britt McHenry for a week following the release of a video that features McHenry berating the desk worker of towing company after her car was towed.
The video, which was captured by a surveillance camera, begins with McHenry saying to the employee, “I am in the news, sweetheart. I will (expletive) sue this place.” The employee then informs McHenry that she is being recorded; McHenry looks at the camera and boldly continues to belittle the employee.
ESPN later announced via Twitter that McHenry would be suspended. McHenry then apologized on Twitter and expressed her regret by saying she let her emotions get the best of her and she had “…said some regrettable things.”
Some members of the Xavierite staff feel that ESPN has taken the correct action by suspending McHenry and agree with the sentiments of people on Twitter that McHenry should be let go.
It comes down to a matter of image. As a well-known anchor for ESPN, whatever McHenry says and does will be connected to that brand, whether she chooses to acknowledge it or not.
However, in this case, McHenry begins her rant by saying “I’m in the news…” drawing a definite connection between her and the popular news/sports station. By saying this, she clearly identifies herself as a TV anchor. And to top it all off, after being told she’s being recorded, she chooses to conduct herself in the same manner.
At the end of the day, ESPN is a business just like any other and they have a very specific brand and image that they work hard to uphold. If they feel that an employee’s actions are not consistent with the image that they want to present to the public, they have the right to take action.
However, there are others on the Xavierite staff who feel some leniency should be shown to McHenry. McHenry, like all people, is entitled to have a bad day.
To make a totally unfair comparison, let us look at the recent incident with Brian Williams. Williams is a news anchor, like McHenry, but he lied to the public on national television on his own news program and on various talk-show outlets.
That is betraying the public trust and he should be fired. McHenry, when all is said and done, was just incredibly rude. She did not falsify evidence in a news report. She did not make up a story and feed it to the public. At the end of the day all she was was rude.
True, this is not the attitude that ESPN wants projected for their brand, but at what point do we cut someone a break and just say: “That’s a person at their worst – on a day where their car was towed and they had to pay a fee. They weren’t thinking straight. Maybe we should cut them a break.”
Apparently the people who run the towing company feel the exact same way. Advanced Towing issued the following quote to CNN:
“As a small business, we saw no benefit to releasing the video, except to highlight personal attacks employees in jobs like towing, public parking enforcement and others sometimes encounter. The video was not licensed or sold to anyone.”
The greater question for those opposed to McHenry’s firing lies in the pivotal observation that if Twitter did not exist, this would not be a news story. No one would care if a person in an isolated incident was rude.
So why do we care now? Some on staff feel that there is a growing online mentality that if we can tear someone down, we should.
To that select staff members say: Let those without sin cast the first stone.
The Xavierite Editorial Board
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