03-31-2016, 09:10 PM
(03-31-2016, 08:31 PM)6andcounting Wrote: She's been with the station 18 years. She's been been a favorite it Pittsburgh; numerous awards for journalism excellence. No history of having to apologize or being punished. Great with the community, charities, blah, blah, blah.
On the station's side, she made the post from her work profile which shows "Wendy Bell WTAE" as her name. They have every right to decide to fire her and there's nothing meaningful she could do in terms of legally getting her job back.
Here's her original comment:
“Next to ‘If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times,' I remember my mom most often saying to my sister and me when we were young and constantly fighting, ‘If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.' I've really had nothing nice to say these past 11 days and so this page has been quiet. There's no nice words to write when a coward holding an AK-47 hoses down a family and their friends sharing laughs and a mild evening on a back porch in Wilkinsburg. There's no kind words when 6 people are murdered. When their children have to hide for cover and then emerge from the frightened shadows to find their mother's face blown off or their father's twisted body leaking blood into the dirt from all the bullet holes. There's just been nothing nice to say. And I've been dragging around this feeling like a cold I can't shake that rattles in my chest each time I breathe and makes my temples throb. I don't want to hurt anymore. I'm tired of hurting.
You needn't be a criminal profiler to draw a mental sketch of the killers who broke so many hearts two weeks ago Wednesday. I will tell you they live within 5 miles of Franklin Avenue and Ardmore Boulevard and have been hiding out since in a home likely much closer to that backyard patio than anyone thinks. They are young black men, likely teens or in their early 20s. They have multiple siblings from multiple fathers and their mothers work multiple jobs. These boys have been in the system before. They've grown up there. They know the police. They've been arrested. They've made the circuit and nothing has scared them enough. Now they are lost. Once you kill a neighbor's three children, two nieces and her unborn grandson, there's no coming back. There's nothing nice to say about that.
But there is HOPE. And Joe and I caught a glimpse of it Saturday night. A young, African American teen hustling like nobody's business at a restaurant we took the boys to over at the Southside Works. This child stacked heavy glass glasses 10 high and carried three teetering towers of them in one hand with plates piled high in the other. He wiped off the tables. Tended to the chairs. Got down on his hands and knees to pick up the scraps that had fallen to the floor. And he did all this with a rhythm and a step that gushed positivity. He moved like a dancer with a satisfied smile on his face. And I couldn't take my eyes off him. He's going to Make It.
When Joe paid the bill, I asked to see the manager. He came over to our table apprehensively and I told him that that young man was the best thing his restaurant had going. The manager beamed and agreed that his young employee was special. As the boys and we put on our coats and started walking out -- I saw the manager put his arm around that child's shoulder and pat him on the back in congratulation. It will be some time before I forget the smile that beamed across that young worker's face -- or the look in his eyes as we caught each other's gaze. I wonder how long it had been since someone told him he was special.
There's someone in your life today -- a stranger you're going to come across -- who could really use that. A hand up. A warm word. Encouragement. Direction. Kindness. A Chance. We can't change what's already happened, but we can be a part of what's on the way. Speak up. Reach out. Dare to Care. Give part of You to someone else. That, my friends, can change someone's course. And then -- just maybe THEN -- I'll start feeling again like there's something nice to say.”
First paragraph, nothing but remorse for the victims. Straight forward.
2nd paragraph, she gives a general profile she believe will pretty much identify the suspects. There wasn't (and still hasn't) been any official suspects identified by police, so none of what she said was official police word, just a relatively obvious assumption. Wilkinsburg is a mostly black, high crime neighborhood with a long history of problems. All of the victims were black and part of the same family; the police said from the start the victims (or at least one of them) was a specific target for the attackers.
3rd and 4th paragraphs are about the waiter. Now the Waterfront, where this restaurant was, is an old steel mill that has be a community revitalization project. There's a Target, Dave & Busters and other places that are larger for all economic classes. However, their are some expense restaurants, specialty stores and very expensive apartments (many Steelers live here as it's a mile from the practice field). It could definitely be described as an upper class area, but it's surrounded by some of the worst (crime, poverty) neighborhood in the city. Most of the workers at the businesses at the Waterfront live in the lower class surrounding neighborhoods. That much is just a fact.
Now for Bell's comments, she's justing pointing out the obvious about the waiter, whether it's his great service or he's a young man from a poverty empowering himself. Funny thing is, she's basically saying he doesn't have white privilege - which is the exact thing the left would say about a young black man. When she said that he hasn't been told he's "special' in a while, I thought she was speaking told his reaction when his manager gave him a pat on the back.
I saw this comment when she first posted it. It did strike me as a bit riskee for a local news anchor, but thought it was a great comment in terms of sympathy for the victims and encouraging self-empowerment and encouraging others to just show appreciation toward others- like she did with the waiter. I don't think her word choice was poor at all. I think she tackled something from a controversial angle that some people, including her employer, didn't like.
WTEA's Facebook page has lost about 12,000 followers (down to 238k) in about 24 hours. I didn't know she was suspended for the past few weeks, I just heard about it last night and than remembered her comment from a few weeks ago.
I had seen this story posted on FB, didn't have the full story. However, this here only further proves to me how crazy this world is. Talk about being overly sensitive.
