Never tweet? Stick to sports? The Cauldron’s John Gorman may now be wishing he stuck to one of those edicts. Or should we say John Gorman, who’s now formerly of The Cauldron?
Thursday night was a difficult one to process if you were paying attention to the news, whether through television or social media, with the sniper shootings that occurred in downtown Dallas during a rally and protest to recent police shootings of black men in Louisiana and Minnesota. The shootings in Dallas resulted in the deaths of five police officers.
A standoff between police and the suspect ended in the death of 25-year-old Micah Xavier Johnson. Prior to killing the gunman with a bomb-equipped robot, Johnson said during negotiations with authorities that he was upset about the shootings that occurred earlier in the week. According to Dallas Police Chief David Brown, Johnson said he “wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.”
That led Gorman to post the following tweets in response to the news and Johnson’s actions. Gorman has since restricted his Twitter account so it can’t be seen by the public, but the tweets in question were screen-captured by College Spun.
Gorman’s inflammatory sentiments led many to lash out at him and the site mentioned in his bio, The Cauldron, which is affiliated with Sports Illustrated.
Cauldron staffers emphasized that the tweets were Gorman’s personal opinion, not representative of the site or its corporate partners. But it was quickly made clear that Gorman’s remarks were being addressed.
https://twitter.com/AndyGlockner/status/751467810325344256
Soon thereafter, The Cauldron officially announced that Gorman would no longer be writing for the site. (His archive is available here.)
https://twitter.com/TheCauldron/status/751486976092622848
https://twitter.com/TheCauldron/status/751487178086060032
Jamie O’Grady, founder and editor-in-chief of The Cauldron, also addressed the situation on Twitter by issuing an apology while repeating that the situation had been addressed. O’Grady included a tweet from Gorman asking people not to criticize or voice their outrage at the site, along with the official statements on the matter tweeted by The Cauldron.
https://twitter.com/JamieOGrady/status/751541183038521344
Last week, the dilemma among sports media in publicly sharing political views or commenting on current events was a topic of discussion. Those paid to write their observations and share their opinions might have trouble turning that off on a personal platform like Twitter that is so easily on hand when emotions boil.
Gorman is just the latest unfortunate example of saying something that he should have kept to himself and surely regrets posting on such a public forum. Be mindful out there, people.
