At the beginning of 2017, like most people, I made New Year’s resolutions. This year I made two of them. The first resolution I made was to not start my own podcast in 2017. The second resolution I made was to pay attention to as much petty-ass Twitter drama as I could. Now, these resolutions may not be the most noble resolutions ever made. They may not require a lot of sacrifice or make the world a better place or say good things about my mental and emotional health. But they are goals, and it’s important to have goals.
I’m happy to say that through March, I’m coming through on my first resolution. I’ve made it almost three months without starting a podcast! The second one has been more of a struggle. There’s been sadly little Twitter drama in 2017. But last week, the Oklahoma City media came through for me.
In the wake of the Ralph Shortey scandal, Phil Cross of Channel 25 was reporting from the Oklahoma capitol, and seeing Senator Stephanie Bice introduce her daughter made him decide, for some reason, to publicly compare her to a victim of sex trafficking:
The important thing to know here that Phil Cross is a good reporter who has broken a lot of important stories and done a lot to hold public officials accountable, but also that he’s something of a showboat and the worst-kept secret in the OKC media is how much other journalists can’t stand him. Journalists are a tribal group inclined to defend their own, but Phil Cross has an almost singular ability to piss them off. I hear and see more potshots, publicly and privately, from other members of the media about Phil Cross than every other local journalist combined.
It’s with that background that the Tulsa World’s excellent capitol reporter Barbara Hoberock came in, ready to jump on Cross for his tweet about Bice’s daughter:
@philsnews ps what you did to Bice is unacceptable. It is her daughter's bday. It is not related to shortey. But u knew that. Freak show.
— Barbara Hoberock (@bhoberock) March 21, 2017
FREAK SHOW! Oh yeah, that’s the good stuff. Let’s go ahead and see who liked Hoberock’s tweet:
Yes, that’s the Tulsa World’s Corey Jones, Frontier‘s Dylan Goforth, Channel 4’s Abby Broyles, and Channel 9’s Aaron Brilbeck among the many who were amused by the freak show sentiment.
But Hoberock wasn’t done. A little while later, she piled on, questioning how Phil Cross even has a job:
Phil Cross, for his part (and much to my disappointment), never responded, but eventually slinked back and deleted his original tweet. Hoberock would delete her second one, and everyone will now go back to passive-aggressively subtweeting each other over and over. But the honest hostility was a lot more fun — hopefully 2017 will bring me lots more Twitter drama to follow. Please, guys, make it happen! I have so little!
Phil is one of my favorite Twitter follows. That being said, I totally agreed that he crossed the line.
I love Phil Cross’s reporting! I’m not on Twatter, so I had no idea.
I also had no idea the local media hated him. That must be why KOCO never responded to my email comparing their reporting to Phil’s. LOL, that is awesome.
Keep up the excellent reporting Phil! We need you!
Did you see the “fake news” out of Koco on the Payne County Sheriff’s Department Facebook?
Did you see where it wasn’t actually fake news and it was a deputy who said something false?
I thought you saw the quotes around the word fake
I will have to admit … I don ‘t know anything about Sen. Bice and her daughters … However if she is covering up for that pedophile Ralph Shortey, then she deserves FAR worse than this …
The guy above is a moron and pays no attention if he thinks Bice or anyone else Is covering up for that slime Shortey.
Read the article again Shackleford.