Regardless of one’s feeling about a failed Tennessee General Assembly bill that would force transgender students to use the restroom of the gender listed on their birth certificates, the public should feel a bit chilled that a WUTC reporter was fired for reporting on a meeting about the bill between several Cleveland High School students and two legislators.
Jacqui Helbert, the reporter, officially was fired for violating journalism ethics, a statement from George Heddleston, senior associate vice chancellor of marketing and communications for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, said.
Though the statement came from UTC, WUTC is an independently owned and operated affiliate of National Public Radio (NPR). However, it is housed in the university’s Cadek Hall and in 2016 received $510,000 from the school.
In the March 7 meeting with the students, Helbert admittedly did not identify herself as a reporter to state Sen. Mike Bell, R-Riceville, and state Rep. Kevin Brooks, R-Cleveland. However, she wore an NPR press badge around her neck, carried bulky radio equipment and pointed a 22-inch microphone at the lawmakers during the meetings.
Were we the legislators, we believe we either clearly would have understood she was a reporter, or, if we had any question, asked her for whom she was recording the interview.
In the interviews, which became a part of Helbert’s story on the transgender bill, Bell was up front with his support for the bill and cut the meeting with the students short. However, Brooks, according to the story, was skeptical of the bill and said he “probably will not – will not support it.”
Brooks, perhaps worried his constituents wouldn’t think he had concerns about men in women’s bathrooms and vice versa, later said he never understood the WUTC reporter to be a member of the media, that she must have been hidden among the high school students and that what he’d said was personal – not for the public.
Days after Helbert’s story aired, several members of Hamilton County’s legislative delegation were meeting with UTC officials on another matter when Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, took issue with the ethics of the reporter, Heddleston said. And he said at least one lawmaker brought up the fact the state provides money to UTC.
Subsequent to that meeting and what must be considered either an implied or veiled threat about public money, the reporter was fired. The firing may have had nothing to do with the local legislative discussion, but the optics look suspicious.
In general, we believe Helbert was let go over an issue that might have been resolved with a discussion, that might not have reached a crisis if legislators said what they meant and meant what they said, and that should never have included talk of state money.