Journalist Mike Donachie is widely believed to have either triggered or furthered the expulsion of the Honey Badger Brigade from the Calgary Comics Expo by tweeting a question to the Expo about why they were allowing a hate group.
In the wake of the lifetime ban of comics artist and creator Alison Tieman from comics expositions (effectively destroying her career) and the later backlash, Donachie has since offered denials and then an apology that one might characterize as lukewarm at best:
Hi. This is Mike Donachie, using Reddit for the first time I hope I’m doing it right.
I’m hoping to address the incident at Calgary Expo and my involvement in it, such as it was.
First, my initial tweet. I expressed a concern that a major con like this would rent a booth to a Gamer Gate group. My understanding, at that point, was that such a group would be a negative thing to have at a con. Since then, many people have tweeted me to make it clear that isn’t necessarily the case, and there are different types of people within Gamer Gate. It’s not all hate speech, I’m told. People are people, as is true anywhere.
I didn’t know any of that. So that means my tweet, suggesting it would be a bad thing to have such a booth, wasn’t based on the full facts. I regret it and I wish I hadn’t sent it. In future, I will be more careful with expressing opinions on Twitter, at least until I have more facts. I should have borne in mind that my words, as a journalist, would carry weight. I simply didn’t think of that because I don’t work in Calgary. That was a mistake.
Please be aware that, thanks to many helpful GG people on Twitter, I’m now reading more about Gamer Gate. I’m not a video games guy so I’m out of the loop. But I know I have a responsibility to be informed, so I plan to put that right.
Next, the ejection of a group of people from the event. I don’t know what happened and I didn’t ask for it to happen. My initial tweet was ill-informed concern about something, but I didn’t expect anyone to be thrown out. At no point was I in contact with anyone at the con. At no point did I ask for action to be taken. I still don’t know why they were ejected.
I had never heard of Honey Badgers before this and I don’t know much about them. I’m hoping we can talk about their aims and what they do, but I don’t intend to judge them.
All of this is a long-winded way of saying: I’m sorry about what happened. These are not weasel words. I genuinely feel bad. I didn’t want anyone’s event ruined and I wish I’d thought about it before I tweeted. In future, I will act differently.
I’ve been to lots of cons and I know the idea is to have fun. I feel terrible that someone wanted to do that, and hasn’t been able to.
Best wishes
● Mike
Karen Straughan (GirlWritesWhat) has a reply message and an invitation for Donachie that any competent, serious journalist would do well to accept.
You can subscribe to GirlWritesWhat’s channel here. – A.L.
