A Dallas journalist has claimed that addressing the mayor as “bruh” on Twitter has cost her her job.
Dallas Morning News education reporter Meghan Mangrum said she responded to a tweet from Mayor Eric Johnson on Feb. 11 that claimed the local media had “no interest” in writing a few drop in violent crime.
“Bruh, national news is all the time going to chase the trend,” she wrote within the since-deleted tweet. “Cultivate relationships with quality local news partnerships.”
She said she was sacked three days after she sent the tweet for violating the newspaper’s social media policy.
In an interview with D Magazine, Mangrum, who’s white, said the paper’s executive editor, Katrice Hardy, who’s black, as is the mayor, asked if she still would have used the word “bruh” if the mayor were white — to which Mangrum said yes.
Mangrum says she’s used the word regularly and has directed it toward a wide range of Twitter accounts, including hockey fans and the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife.
In response to Dictionary.com, the word has grow to be somewhat common, noting in its definition that “while bruh has been recorded in black English dating back to the Eighteen Nineties, bruh spread as an interjection variously expressing surprise or dismay since a minimum of the 2010s.”
“I might never tell an individual of color, ‘Oh, it wasn’t racist. You shouldn’t feel that way,’” Mangrum told the magazine. “But I do know my intent, and it was in no way about race. I take advantage of that word with my friends and once I tweet about hockey. It’s just a part of my vernacular. I grew up in Central Florida, and, you realize, I’m a millennial.”
Mangrum said she responded because she felt compelled to defend her colleagues.
“He was going after local media for his or her coverage of crime,” Mangrum told the magazine, noting that she saw a few of her other colleagues also responding to him over Twitter, telling him his accusations were unfair.
“Standing up for my colleagues and the work that we do, once I know we’re doing good and honest work, is something I pride myself on and something that I search for in my colleagues and in my workplace as well.”
Mangrum’s firing coincided with a Dallas News Guild protest that she helped to arrange. The union later filed a criticism on her behalf with the National Labor Relations Board.
When reached by The Post, the mayor’s chief of staff Tristan Hallman said the mayor’s office didn’t have contact with anyone on the Dallas Morning News on the matter.
“We should not going to comment on personnel decisions and social media policies of a private-sector business. We wish the reporter the most effective of luck in her future endeavors,” Hallman said in a press release.
Hardy told The Post that The Dallas Morning News doesn’t comment on personnel matters. Mangrum didn’t return a request for comment from The Post sent on Thursday.