The Trail Blazers’ decision to fire newly hired play-by-play broadcaster Braiden Bell isn’t fading quietly into the background.
Now longtime former ESPN SportsCenter anchor Linda Cohn has weighed in, questioning whether comments made by someone at 15 years old should follow that person indefinitely.
Bell lost the Blazers job just hours after KGW-TV reported on racist and sexist social-media posts he made as a teenager. Bell, now 29, later apologized for the posts and said they do not reflect who he is today.
Cohn, speaking on The Linda Cohn Show, didn’t excuse what Bell wrote. Her issue was what happens after someone acknowledges youthful mistakes and grows beyond them.
“If there is no path back from something you said at 15, then we’re not really asking people to learn from their mistakes, are we?” Cohn said. “We’re just waiting to find those mistakes.”
That’s pretty much the question hanging over this entire story.
“The stupid thing a teenager posts tonight can still be sitting there when they’re 29 years of age, applying for their dream job,” Cohn said. “Braiden Bell learned that in probably the most painful way imaginable. He got his dream job and hours later, it was gone like that.”
Cohn stressed that Bell’s original comments were indefensible.
“The words he wrote at 15 were wrong,” she said. “There’s no defending them. But I think we’re allowed to ask another question, too. How long should a person have to pay for the worst thing they said as a kid? Fourteen years? Twenty? Forever?”
The story has since grown well beyond Bell. TEGNA, KGW’s parent company, has reportedly launched an internal review into whether proper editorial procedures were followed in the station’s reporting, while KGW itself has faced significant public criticism. Cohn’s larger point may explain why this one has struck such a nerve.
“If we don’t believe people can become better than who they were at 15,” she said, “then I think we’ve got a much bigger problem than one NBA broadcaster’s old Twitter account.”
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Firing him after hiring him was where this got messy. If they never hire him, fine. But they did. Mean from that day forward, they were giving him a chance.. And then they pulled the chair out. They wasted his time and the result publicly identified him through the mistakes a 15 year old. It was a great disservice to an adult.
If people are going to tweet and post in public at any age, there is no “should” or “shouldn’t” based on age… they WILL be held accountable by the public. Especially for racially insensitive statements, when embarking on a career where racial sensitivity is a must. There is no free pass due to being a young age once you start representing to the public who you are. Unfortunately parents don’t keep their kids off the internet. Here are the consequences.
And one more thing LINDA! This isn’t about “paying” over time for what you “said” in a public forum. It doesn’t work like that, where words that represent you in public have an expiration date. This is the real world Linda. If you represent WHO YOU ARE in public, don’t expect them to believe you’re going simply change with age. It’s a representation of your values, how you were raised, and where your thought are at that moment. It’s part of who you are. Denying because a decade has passed and sweeping racism under the rug simply forgiving and forgetting, and letting that person narrate your career as a basketball plater is is not a comforting feeling. You want people to just forget about it when somebody is showing you who they are? Makes me wonder who YOU are? What did YOU used to say?
How about instead of defending the person who said racist things, you go do your job and ask players how they feel about it. We already know how people like you are going to feel about it. It doesn’t matter to you. But you won’t be working with the guy, having your career narrated by him. They will. (would have been). Go be a journalist, Linda. THEN speak about journalism.