President Trump dragged the immigration debate to a new low this week by calling a number of countries, including all of Africa, 'shitholes'. We broke our long tradition of not using profane language on KQED Newsroom as a result.
One of the benefits of being a veteran journalist is knowing when such rules should be broken. This was the President speaking -- he broke the barrier, not us. At first, NPR and PBS tried to uphold the traditional standards, so KQED Radio did not air the term.
I disagreed so my online team immediately published a story with the term in the headline. Our job is to serve our audience by reporting the news, not condescending to them.
By Friday morning the execs at public media had come to their senses and started broadcasting the word. KQED did too, on Forum, again online and ultimately on Newsroom.
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