Investigation Launched After Blazers Broadcaster Loses Job Over Racial Comments

In 2019, Carson King became an unlikely internet hero after raising more than $1 million for a children’s hospital with a simple sign at a college football game. Then a reporter digging into King’s past found offensive tweets he had written when he was 16. The story that was supposed to expose King’s old posts quickly became a story about the reporter who found them. Readers dug into the journalist’s own history, and the Des Moines Register eventually fired him.

Seven years later, another sports story is raising a remarkably similar question. This time, the person at the center of the controversy is Braiden Bell, a 29-year-old broadcaster whose biggest career opportunity disappeared within hours after offensive tweets from his teenage years resurfaced. But the story did not end with Bell losing his job.

TEGNA, the parent company of Portland NBC affiliate KGW-TV, has now launched an internal review into how the station handled the story. The review is examining whether KGW news director John Tierney and reporter Devon Haskins followed company editorial procedures while researching and reporting Bell’s old posts. TEGNA said the review is meant to confirm that proper editorial policies were followed and is not intended to amend or retract KGW’s published story. The Trail Blazers, meanwhile, said, “The Portland Trail Blazers have zero tolerance for racist, sexist, or harmful comments… We did not meet our own bar in this process, and for that we apologize to Blazers fans and to Rip City.”

That changes the story completely. The question is no longer only what Bell wrote at 15 or why the Trail Blazers decided they could not move forward with him. It is now also about how a newsroom decides when something a teenager wrote more than a decade ago becomes newsworthy enough to affect the adult they become.

And Bell’s story had started on a very different note.

On October 1, the Trail Blazers announced Bell as their new television play-by-play broadcaster. At 29, he had spent years building toward that moment, earning a Sports Journalism degree from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and working his way through broadcasting jobs with the Phoenix Mercury and Valley Suns. Portland represented his jump to the NBA’s major stage.

Bell publicly celebrated the opportunity, saying it was difficult to describe the honor he felt and that he could not wait to become part of the Portland community. Then the celebration lasted only hours.

KGW reporter Devon Haskins conducted a social-media review after the hiring announcement and found posts Bell had written on Twitter in 2012 and 2013. Bell was 15 years old and a high school sophomore when he wrote them. The posts included racist comments aimed at Asian and Black people and misogynistic remarks about women.

The discovery quickly reached the Trail Blazers.

Haskins contacted Bell’s agent and the team, and KGW provided the organization with screenshots of the posts. The Trail Blazers then rescinded Bell’s hiring. KGW reported that no offensive posts were found from Bell’s adult years, with his public social-media activity shifting toward sports and broadcasting from his college years onward.

That detail is important because it leaves readers with a much harder question than simply deciding whether the old posts were offensive.

They clearly were.

The harder question is what those posts say about the person Bell became.

Bell did not deny writing them or try to excuse the language. In his October 2 apology, he accepted responsibility while arguing that the posts belonged to a version of himself who was 15 years old.

“I am deeply sorry for the language that I used on Twitter. These tweets, while wrong, were written by me 14 years ago while I was only 15 years old and have no reflection of who I am today. I do not take lightly any harm it causes now. I regret this being my first impression to many of you online, but I can take solace in knowing that the people who truly know me understand that this is not the kind of person I am. Again, I’d like to apologize to anyone who was hurt by my words and will continue to always treat people with kindness and respect.”

The Trail Blazers did not accept that distinction.

“The Portland Trail Blazers have zero tolerance for racist, sexist, or harmful comments. Social media posts made by our recently announced play-by-play broadcaster are in clear violation of team and league policies, as well as our values and expectations. Therefore, we will not be moving forward with this broadcaster. The play-by-play role carries a long legacy of excellence, on the broadcast and in character, and we hold that standard without exception. We did not meet our own bar in this process, and for that we apologize to Blazers fans and to Rip City. We believe strongly that everyone who is a part of Rip City should feel welcome and safe and we will make sure that our new broadcaster reflects these values. We will do better.”

That last admission may be just as important as the decision itself.

The Trail Blazers acknowledged that their own hiring process had failed to uncover the public posts before Bell was offered the job. KGW reported the information, but the team made the decision to end the employment relationship. That distinction matters because the controversy is now being judged on two separate levels: the team’s decision to fire Bell and the newsroom’s decision to investigate and publish his past.

Then the backlash moved toward KGW.

Critics questioned why a newsroom would search through the social-media history of someone who was only 15 when the posts were written, especially after the station found no similar offensive material from his adult years. A KGW insider described the decision as “creepy,” while KUSA anchor Kyle Clark, a journalist at KGW’s sister TEGNA station, called the reporting “out of bounds.” ASU journalism professor Paola Boivin described the decision to dig up the posts as “journalistically indefensible.”

Clay Travis made the criticism even broader.

“Minors who commit serious crimes have their legal problems sealed from the public. But offhand remarks made on social media as a youth, that are regarded as offensive years later, remain on your permanent record and can be held up as career-rendering evidence in perpetuity… Making this a standard will only embolden reporters stooping to this yellow journalism level.”

But there is another side to the argument.

Bell was not an anonymous teenager whose private messages were suddenly leaked. The posts were public, remained on the same account he later used as a professional broadcaster, and were discovered while a major NBA franchise was announcing him as a public-facing voice. The Trail Blazers were entitled to make their own judgment about whether those posts conflicted with the standards they wanted for the role.

And once the team decided to rescind the hiring, the decision itself became news.

That is where the journalism question becomes much harder.

The real issue is not whether KGW was allowed to see the posts. It is whether the newsroom handled what it found in the right way.

According to reporting from The Desk, KGW editors initially planned to give Bell more time to respond. That changed after the Trail Blazers told the station they were firing him. The station then moved the story online roughly three hours before its scheduled evening broadcast because of concerns that another local outlet could get the story first. The Desk also reported internal frustration at KGW as angry calls and messages poured into the station. One newsroom source said, “Pissed off people calling our station every few minutes doesn’t really help things.”

That detail creates an entirely different question.

Was the newsroom simply reporting an important development as quickly as possible, or did the race to be first change the way the story was handled?

The answer is not established. The claim about rushing the story to avoid being scooped comes from anonymous newsroom reporting and needs to be treated that way. But the fact that TEGNA is now reviewing the editorial process makes the question impossible to ignore.

TEGNA’s review is specifically focused on whether Tierney and Haskins followed company editorial processes while researching and reporting the posts. That includes questions around how historical social-media material involving a minor was handled, publication timing and whether Bell was given enough time to respond. The review, according to The Desk, is intended to make sure the station followed proper policies and is not designed to retract or amend the published report.

That distinction matters.

TEGNA is not investigating whether Bell’s tweets were offensive. It is reviewing whether KGW handled the reporting properly.

And journalism’s own standards make that a serious question.

The Society of Professional Journalists’ code says, “Balance the public’s need for information against potential harm or discomfort. Pursuit of the news is not a license for undue intrusiveness.”

It also says journalists should “Consider the long-term implications of the extended reach and permanence of publication.”

That is almost the exact problem Bell’s case puts on the table.

A 15-year-old’s post can disappear from the front page of the internet within minutes. But it can also sit there for 14 years, waiting for the day that teenager becomes a professional with a much larger public profile.

That problem is not unique to Bell.

In 2018, MLB pitcher Josh Hader faced a similar reckoning when racist and homophobic tweets he had written at 17 resurfaced during the All-Star Game. Hader apologized, underwent sensitivity training and remained with the Milwaukee Brewers.

In 2021, Alexi McCammond resigned as Teen Vogue’s incoming editor-in-chief after tweets she wrote at 17 resurfaced. And in 2019, the Carson King case showed how quickly a story about someone’s teenage posts can turn back toward the journalist who uncovered them.

Those cases do not provide a simple answer for Bell.

They show that there isn’t one.

An employer can decide that old conduct is disqualifying. A journalist can decide that the same conduct is newsworthy. A reader can believe both that the posts were deeply offensive and that a 15-year-old should not necessarily be judged exactly like a 29-year-old.

Those positions can exist at the same time.

Bell himself appears to have understood that his old words would not simply disappear. His apology did not ask people to pretend the posts never existed. Instead, he asked them to separate those posts from the person he says he became.

Whether that distinction should have saved his career was ultimately the Trail Blazers’ decision.

Whether KGW handled the discovery responsibly is now TEGNA’s question.

And that may be the part of this story that lasts longer than the tweets themselves.

Because Bell’s biggest opportunity did not disappear simply because the internet remembered what he wrote at 15. It disappeared because, at 29, those words were found, reported, handed to his employer and judged against the standards of the person he had become.

Now, the newsroom that brought those words back into the spotlight has to answer a question of its own: when a teenager’s digital past collides with an adult’s professional future, where should a journalist draw the line?

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