Remembering Kobe Bryant
Social media appeals to the immature school boy living deep inside all of us.
Impulsive keyboard responses - firing off a Tweet or Facebook post without thinking - can lead to hurt, a ruined reputation or serious repercussions at work.
Just ask Roseanne Barr, who lost a TV gig over a Tweet. Or Kathy Griffin who lost an entire career over a terrible post.
Look, we all have ugly thoughts. Before social media, we uttered them to our friends or family members who scowled and told us to grow up, be nice or not speak ill of the dead.
Which brings us to Felicia Sonmez, a Washington Post reporter who’s enjoying an unscheduled sabbatical - or rather a suspension from work - over Tweets she sent Sunday after the awful news broke that Kobe Bryant had been killed in a helicopter crash.
I don’t know Ms. Sonmez and hadn’t heard of her until yesterday. But for reasons known only to her, “moments after” news of Kobe’s death broke she dove into the digital tsunami of tributes for this beloved NBA star with a link to a story from several years ago about a rape charge made against Bryant in 2003 that was ultimately dismissed.
In an instant, she became the proverbial you-know-what in the American punchbowl.
And America responded.
Sonmez claimed she received about 10,000 irate responses. There was raw hatred on display and a few death threats. But she bizarrely tried to turn the heated reaction into some sort of “Me Too” moment by noting that the responses demonstrated “the pressure people come under to stay silent in these cases.”
For God’s sake, THAT wasn’t the cause of all the anger. It was her tone-deaf timing. A beloved athlete and his 13-year-old daughter had just perished in a fiery crash. People were reeling from the horrific news.
A little decency was in order.
Sonmez deleted her Tweets after brass at the paper ordered her to do so. And she was suspended.
From Managing Editor Tracy Grant: “National political reporter Felicia Sonmez was placed on administrative leave while The Post reviews whether tweets about the death of Kobe Bryant violated The Post newsroom’s social media policy. The tweets displayed poor judgment that undermined the work of her colleagues.”
Yes, there was a place for this ugly chapter from Bryant’s past. That would be somewhere in the body of a much longer newspaper story about his extraordinary life.
But Sonmez wasn’t writing a comprehensive story about Bryant. She was Tweeting.
In the aftermath of Kobe Bryant’s sudden death, news stories everywhere rightly focused on Bryant’s achievements. His record-setting 20-year career in the NBA, how at 18 he was the youngest player ever to enter the league and his two Olympic gold medals.
His post-retirement life was featured, too. After Bryant left the NBA in 2016 he authored childrens’ books, won an Oscar and coached his daughter’s youth basketball league.
Despite his wealth and fame Kobe Bryant was a family man who genuinely seemed to delight in his girls.
There was so much to say about this exquisite athlete who played basketball with unbridled joy and endeared himself to millions. He seemed to live a full life.
For many, Sunday was a day of shock, disbelief and sadness. From messages scrawled in sidewalk chalk to neon billboards to the Empire State Building bathed in purple and gold in Bryant’s honor, the country spontaneously expressed its love for this legend.
Yet when Bryant and eight others crashed, this Post reporter didn’t pause to reflect on the horror of Bryant’s sudden death, the loss of the others on board the helicopter or Kobe’s incredible career. Instead, she decided only to remind folks of a 17-year-old scandal involving Bryant.
Raises the simple question: What is wrong with some people?
