The Associated Press urges Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to take a stand and step in following a report that his press secretary’s behavior resulted in an AP reporter getting threats and other abuse online.
AP CEO Daisy Veerasingham wrote to DeSantis asking the Florida governor to address the “harassing behavior” by his aide Christina Pushaw. Reporter Brendan Farrington tweeted this past week that he had received online threats regarding a story aimed at DeSantis.
“For your sake, I hope government doesn’t threaten your safety. I’ll be fine, I hope. Freedom. Just please don’t kill me,” Farrington wrote on his account that has now gone private.
Twitter recently suspended Pushaw’s account for breaking its rules regarding “abusive behavior” due to her behavior toward Farrington.
“You will ban the press secretary of a democratically-elected official while allowing the Taliban to live-tweet their conquest of Afghanistan?” Pushaw said.
“As soon as Farrington told me he received threats, I tweeted that nobody should be threatening anyone; that is completely unacceptable,” Pushaw said to the AP. “I also urged him to report any threats to police.”
Eduardo Razo is the Assistant Content Editor for BNM, which includes writing daily news stories on the news media industry. He can be found on Twitter @eddierazo_ or you can reach him by email at eddie1991razo@gmail.com.
