Extremism Watch: Sinclair’s Jonathan Choe serves up lots of publicity for the Proud Boys

Yes­ter­day, the Wash­ing­ton State Capi­tol Cam­pus in Olympia was once again the site of a ral­ly and march called by the Proud Boys, a far-right, mil­i­tant extrem­ist group that espous­es a vio­lent agen­da of hate. While ran­corous week­end right wing gath­er­ings in Olympia aren’t uncom­mon, what was notable about yes­ter­day’s event was the extent to which it was pro­mot­ed by a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Sin­clair Broad­cast Group, which owns Seat­tle-based KOMO TV.

Sin­clair, as many Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate read­ers are no doubt aware, is a giant media con­glom­er­ate with fer­vent right wing own­er­ship that has spent years buy­ing up local tele­vi­sion sta­tions all around the coun­try and turn­ing them into local ver­sions of FNC, with Mur­dochi­an attrib­ut­es and ten­den­cies. About ten years ago, Sin­clair gob­bled up the for­mer local media com­pa­ny Fish­er Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, with FCC approval, giv­ing it con­trol over KOMO and oth­er sta­tions like Port­land’s KATU.

Ever since then, KOMO has been on a down­ward tra­jec­to­ry.

The for­mer home of Dan Lewis, Kathi Goertzen, and Steve Pool is nowa­days per­haps best known for its right wing nar­ra­tives, like the “Seat­tle is Dying” non­sense it aired sev­er­al years ago. Keep­ing the “Seat­tle is Dying” line going in 2022 with end­less tweets carp­ing about the liv­ing con­di­tions of the city’s unhoused pop­u­la­tion is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of KOMO’s Jonathan Choe, who has worked for the sta­tion as a “Crime and Jus­tice reporter” since April of 2020.

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Choe took a break from his “Project Seat­tle” duties to go down to Olympia to osten­si­bly cov­er the Proud Boys ral­ly. I say osten­si­bly because if you look at what Choe post­ed about the event, there’s no actu­al report­ing there. It’s just a bunch of what could char­i­ta­bly be called pro­mo­tion­al videos and tweets… in essence, pub­lic­i­ty for a hate group that the Anti-Defama­tion League says is “misog­y­nis­tic, Islam­o­pho­bic, trans­pho­bic and anti-immigration.”

Choe’s first tweet about the gath­er­ing, post­ed at 12:38 PM on March 19th, could have dou­bled as an announce­ment for, or invi­ta­tion to, the event:

Proud Boys ral­ly: From 1pm-4pm, “ral­ly for Amer­i­ca,” hap­pen­ing at the Capi­tol Cam­pus in Olympia. Lots of “Let’s Go Bran­don” chants expect­ed to break out. Orga­niz­ers say they’re protest­ing the treat­ment of those arrest­ed dur­ing the Jan.6 U.S. Capi­tol insur­rec­tion. @komonews

That was fol­lowed by a bunch of videos and cap­tions that por­trayed one of the nation’s most noto­ri­ous hate groups in the most favor­able light possible:

Law enforce­ment watch­ing: Proud Boys and orga­niz­ers empha­siz­ing today’s march in Olympia will be a peace­ful demon­stra­tion. More than a hun­dred peo­ple includ­ing kids so far.

– 12:46 PM

Ground rules: And the Pledge of Alle­giance to the flag.

– 12:49 PM

Prayer before march: Tak­ing a knee.

– 12:51 PM

Proud Boys ral­ly is on: Now march­ing and chant­i­ng for “free­dom” in down­town Olympia. Orga­niz­ers say this is for cama­raderie. Call­ing those arrest­ed dur­ing Jan. 6 Capi­tol riot, “polit­i­cal pris­on­ers who have been denied basic rights while impris­oned.” @komonews

– 1:01 PM

Olympia Police trail­ing: Ral­ly orga­niz­ers say safe­ty is pri­or­i­ty and telling marchers not to engage heck­lers. @komonews

– 1:04 PM

March­ing through down­town Olympia: Now going through busy shop­ping cor­ri­dor. @komonews

– 1:07 PM

Not every­one’s a fan: Marchers being met with a few heck­lers. @komonews

– 1:11 PM

Marchers return­ing: Head­ing back to the Capi­tol Cam­pus. More speech­es expect­ed for next few hours. Wait­ing to see what hap­pens next. So far, no issues. @komonews

– 1:19 PM

One more look: “Free­dom mobile” is an atten­tion grab­ber for sure. #Olympia #Capi­tol #Proud­Boys

– 2:15 PM

After tak­ing a break from tweet­ing, Choe added this just before 5 PM:

That’s a wrap: Proud Boys and oth­er marchers say they will stay on the Capi­tol Cam­pus in Olympia for a few more hours to min­gle and answer ques­tions if any­one is inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about their cause and mis­sion. @komonews

– 4:55 PM

That last tweet has since been delet­ed, but not before it was pre­served for pos­ter­i­ty via screen­shot.

Choe added anoth­er at 5:53 PM that was still up at press time:

Final Note: Mem­bers of the Proud Boys and the orga­niz­ers with “Medi­um Free” declined my requests for inter­views or com­ment. They are leery of the main­stream media. But they allowed me to record freely on pub­lic prop­er­ty with­out inter­fer­ence. No umbrel­las or hands in my face.

At no point dur­ing his after­noon of tweet­ing did Choe both­er to men­tion that the Proud Boys have been des­ig­nat­ed a hate group, that they have a vio­lent agen­da, or that many of their mem­bers have been con­vict­ed of crimes. Instead, he por­trayed them as patri­ot­ic, peace­ful, devot­ed to the flag, and family-oriented.

I watched all of the videos Choe post­ed with his tweets. None of them con­tain voiceovers or any crit­i­cal com­ments or any con­text of any kind. The videos sim­ply depict the Proud Boys and their allies in action. They’re indis­tin­guish­able from videos the Proud Boys might have post­ed them­selves for recruit­ment purposes.

KOMO did not run a sto­ry by Choe dur­ing its Sat­ur­day evening broad­casts about the Proud Boys’ Sat­ur­day gath­er­ing in Olympia. But he has over 16,000 fol­low­ers on Twit­ter and access to larg­er audi­ences by way of peo­ple like Andy Ngo.

It’s telling that Choe delet­ed his tweet that prac­ti­cal­ly invit­ed his fol­low­ers to come on down to the Capi­tol, min­gle with the Proud Boys, and learn more about their “cause and mis­sion.” The Proud Boys could­n’t have asked for a more sym­pa­thet­ic, fawn­ing char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of their activ­i­ties and existence.

In the very first tweet, there was an allu­sion to the Jan­u­ary 6th insur­rec­tion, but notice that Choe does­n’t con­nect the dots. He tweet­ed “Orga­niz­ers say they’re protest­ing the treat­ment of those arrest­ed dur­ing the Jan.6 U.S. Capi­tol insur­rec­tion” with­out both­er­ing to then explain that the Proud Boys were involved in the Jan­u­ary 6th insur­rec­tion and are thus protest­ing the effort to hold their own mem­bers account­able for attempt­ing to vio­lent­ly over­throw Amer­i­can democracy.

You might think that a self-described “Crime and Jus­tice reporter” would describe the crim­i­nal, sedi­tious behav­ior of a group he’s cho­sen to spend an after­noon shad­ow­ing, but at least in this case, you’d be total­ly mistaken.

Eth­i­cal jour­nal­ism is sup­posed to be about seek­ing truth, pro­vid­ing con­text, min­i­miz­ing harm, act­ing inde­pen­dent­ly, expos­ing uneth­i­cal con­duct, stand­ing up to pow­er­ful inter­ests, pro­tect­ing democ­ra­cy, and chal­leng­ing hate and intolerance.

Choe calls him­self a jour­nal­ist — he even empha­sizes that label as part of his Twit­ter han­dle — but he does not seem to be a skilled prac­ti­tion­er of what the Soci­ety of Pro­fes­sion­al Jour­nal­ists defines in their code of ethics as jour­nal­ism.

Yes­ter­day, he pret­ty much dropped any pre­tense of being a jour­nal­ist and instead chose to act as a press agent for the Proud Boys dur­ing his after­noon in Olympia.

Choe’s LinkedIn pro­file says he stud­ied jour­nal­ism and grad­u­ate with a degree in jour­nal­ism from Boston Uni­ver­si­ty, but it also reveal­ing­ly includes this note: “Bare­ly made it out. Thanks to all my profs for being patient.”

Hm.

Won­der what Choe’s jour­nal­ism pro­fes­sors would think of his behav­ior yesterday?

Any­one with a cam­era-equipped phone can shad­ow a ral­ly of vio­lent extrem­ists and throw up a few video clips, no jour­nal­ism degree or broad­cast job required.

Prac­tic­ing jour­nal­ism is hard­er, and cov­er­ing extrem­ist groups appro­pri­ate­ly is some­thing that can be dif­fi­cult and tricky to get right, no pun intended.

As a trained jour­nal­ist with access to air­waves owned by the pub­lic and licensed to his employ­er, Choe is sup­posed to be seek­ing truth and report­ing it as a pub­lic ser­vice to the peo­ple of this region. Clear­ly, he’s not doing that.

Choe has worked in the news busi­ness for decades, at many dif­fer­ent sta­tions, so by this point, he should be able to crit­i­cal­ly report on an extrem­ist hate group. He empha­sizes in his KOMO biog­ra­phy that he “men­tors young jour­nal­ists and is always encour­ag­ing more minori­ties to enter the business.”

But he’s not set­ting a very good exam­ple for those he mentors.

If you share our con­cerns about Choe and KOMO’s direc­tion, then let Sin­clair’s Seat­tle office know. KOMO main­tains an email address for view­er com­ments that you may send a mes­sage to: pro­gram­ming (at) komotv4 (dot) com.

POSTSCRIPT: After the pub­li­ca­tion of this sto­ry, Jonathan Choe delet­ed all of the above­quot­ed tweets and blocked NPI on Twit­ter along with hun­dreds of oth­er activists, jour­nal­ists, and elect­ed lead­ers. The Stranger’s Rich Smith and Dai­ly Kos’ David Nei­w­ert report that Sin­clair has end­ed Choe’s employ­ment; his biog­ra­phy is gone from the KOMO web­site and his name is off the sta­tion mast­head. The videos Choe post­ed have been pre­served by Dai­ly Kos and can be seen here.