While the state of supposed “Journalism” has never been worse than it is in 2021, the bar continues to be set LOWER by those in the profession. That’s exactly where we find ourselves with one Jason Nguyen, an EMMY NOMINATED “investigative Journalist” working for the ABC affiliate out in Salt Lake City, Utah. How is one capable of lowering a “bar” that is dug into the ground at this point? Let’s find out.
“Investigative Journalism”
Jason first caught the eyes of many on Twitter by conducting his version of “investigative journalism”; which included the use of hacked materials from an online donation site for the defense of Kyle Rittenhouse. Since we’ve come to expect this behavior from journalists at this point, let’s ignore the ethics of using the information and get to the tweet.
Jason went ahead and paid a visit to the individual who gave a $10 donation to the fundraiser, documenting the activity in a way that frames the individual quite poorly. The rationale given by Jason himself was to “hear his side of the story”, ignoring the fact that there really was no “story”. He goes on to clarify his POV, stating that the “story” was actually the fact that the donation was given using a government email.
While this is slightly less malicious-sounding than what many thought (and possibly untrue), the ethical questions and poor journalistic “framing” still obviously remain. As you could imagine, users on Twitter dot com were NONE too pleased by the tweet. We’ll provide those in a separate post when we collect them all.
The Ratio
Amassing 11,500 “Replies” compared to just 174 non-quote Tweet “Retweets”, Jason found himself placing at #10 in our Twitter Ratio Rankings. Among the worst that we’ve seen on Twitter in 2021, Jason eventually deleted the tweet, providing the world with this explanation:
This tweet itself may find itself placing highly in the rankings, as the reception early-on has not been positive. Many are calling for a sincere apology instead of, well, whatever this is. As it stands however, Jason will have his tweet go down in the record books as our #10 Ratio in our recorded ratio history; An enormous feat that only FEW can hope to achieve!
The “Aftermath”
Despite the deletion of the tweet and several days passing since it had been originally written, it was still fresh in the minds of many. While we don’t condone what Jason is referring to in the tweet below, we do question the validity of the statement for a few reasons. Regardless, Jason left us with THIS message before ultimately deciding to put his profile on “Protected” mode.
When will he take his profile off of “private” mode? What will he tweet next? Will he apologize for doxing a guy over a $10 donation? How did he win an “Emmy”? All valid questions that remain unanswered. We’ll update the post or even write an entirely new one as more updates come!
