USA Today’s Coverage of Young Athlete’s Old Tweets Is Vigilantism, Not Journalism

Michelle Malkin   

On Sunday, 21-year-old University of Oklahoma quarterback Kyler Murray won the Heisman Trophy. He gave a gracious, emotional speech that celebrated his faith in God, respect for his fellow athletes, love of family, lifelong work ethic, and team spirit.

“I’ve worked my whole life to fulfill my goals, but at the same time, I know there’s a higher power looking down on me. He enables me to do all things. For that I’m grateful—for the many blessings that God has blessed me with,” Murray humbly told reporters.

But one reporter wasn’t interested in covering the actual news of the Heisman winner’s triumph. He was interested in sabotaging it.

Within hours of the press conference, USA Today sports writer Scott Gleeson penned an article attacking Murray for posting “tweets using an anti-gay slur.” Murray and family awoke Monday morning to a barrage of character smears slamming his “homophobic” posts from six years ago—when Murray was 14 or 15 years old and jokingly called his friends “queer.”

Google is now clogged with wall-to-wall coverage of his teenage antics from CNN to the “Today” show to every sports outlet and his hometown Oklahoma newspaper.

Gleeson’s hit piece reeks of deceptive vigilantism, not journalism. After noting that Murray had a “Saturday to remember,” Gleeson wrote that “the Oklahoma quarterback’s memorable night also helped resurface social media’s memory of several homophobic tweets more than six years old.”

Who “resurfaced social media’s memory”? Why, it was Gleeson himself! By creating an illusion that Murray’s schoolboy tweets were the subject of any scrutiny and outrage other than Gleeson’s own, USA Today gave us a shining example of the manufacturing of fake news. Ain’t misleading passive voice grand?

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