The story of Iowa’s Carson King should have been a happy one. As I outlined in a previous story, King took the opportunity to raise over $1 million in charity for a children’s hospital after a sign of his asking for beer money went viral. Anheuser-Busch even said they’d match the amount King raised and include it in the donations.

The Des Moines Register was set to do a feel-good story on King’s charity efforts, but the reporter assigned to the task, Aaron Calvin, delved into King’s social media background for no discernible reason and found some tweets King had sent in 2011 when he was 16 where he quoted Daniel Tosh during his show “Tosh.0.”

The Register’s editors decided it would include the tweets for, again, reasons that I can’t fathom, but King got out ahead of them and released the info on his own terms with a public statement. King was forced to issue an apology and Anheuser-Busch, though promising it would still deliver on the charity, publicly cut all ties with King.

Now, what should have been a highlight of a man’s life, and a story about giving and goodness, has become about some bad tweets sent nearly a decade ago, and all of it thanks to a media that is more focused on controversy than uplifting stories.

But hang on a minute.

While the Des Moines Register was busy making the world a better place by exposing the past tweets of good people in order to ruin them, it turns out that the reporter who went through his tweets has a history of saying nasty things as well.

As it turns out, Calvin seems to want to teach children how to do drugs and be prostitutes, and read porn scripts to high schoolers.

If you wish to politely express concerns to the @DMRegister about reporter @aaronpcalvin tweeting about sex trafficking children You can call 515-284-8000 pic.twitter.com/KzN6gIGhvq — An Open Secret (@AnOpenSecret) September 25, 2019

He also apparently hates police and released a tweet saying “f**k all cops” and has repeatedly dropped the “n-word.”

Calvin has now protected his tweets, possibly in order to see to it that nothing else is discovered.

Gee, it's almost like the guy who likes to expose the past tweets of good people to ruin them doesn't want people looking into his past tweets. pic.twitter.com/1nUxfhaaWV — Brandon Morse (@TheBrandonMorse) September 25, 2019

What’s more, the Des Moines Register has now acknowledged that these old tweets of Calvin’s are out in the ether and they say they are now “investigating.”

Taking bets now about statements being released on how their reporter is being "victimized." https://t.co/iEmp6FqQQr — Brandon Morse (@TheBrandonMorse) September 25, 2019

Before this investigation concludes and Calvin’s fate is decided, I want to make something very clear.

I hope that Calvin doesn’t get fired for his old tweets, and while this may sound like I’m giving someone a pass, I’m of this position because I don’t think that even one more person should have to suffer anything because of some stupid things they said on social media a long time ago.

What I believe should happen is the Register should definitely acknowledge that their own reporter had some seriously horrible tweets of his own in the past just for transparency’s sake. However, on top of that, I believe that they should apologize for the way they handled King’s old tweets, and make it clear that making the decision to expose them was a mistake.

I want them to make that statement because I want that example to flourish throughout all of the mainstream media. Yes, Calvin’s tweets were bad, but they’re also nearly a decade old and, outside of exposing the hypocrisy of the beam in his eye while he reported on the splinter in another’s, they should mean next to nothing.

This “cancel culture” we have has, and is going to, destroy the lives of too many innocent people. We need to end it.