On Tuesday night, Twitter’s new 280-character limit appeared to have claimed its first victim. In an unbelievable and now deleted tweet, CNN senior media reporter Dylan Byers openly lamented how much “talent” the media and the entertainment industries was losing because of the flood of sexual harassment allegations. As expected, the reaction was swift and fierce and garnered literally thousands of angry comments.
In the offending tweet pictured below, Byers bemoaned:
The rebukes came at Byers like a raging torrent and not just from average Twitter uses but from his CNN colleagues as well. CNN Money Video Producer Abigail Brook shot back by telling him that “we can find some suitable replacements.” CNN Tech Reporter Selena Larson raked Byers over the coals: “Also worth considering the drain of talent of all women who left the industry because of harassment and abuse.”
Katherine Krueger, Politics Editor for Splinter News, tore into Byers in a series of tweets. “So I see Dylan Byers has finally gone fully Dylan Byers … it’s nuts how many talented, unemployed journalists I know while Dylan Byers will always have a six figure [sic] job,” she slammed. “Powerful men using their power to do bad things which other powerful men in turn defend? I am stunned.”
Byers was forced to issue this clarification shortly after his first (if you could even call it that):
The backlash was so fierce that someone had actually edited Byers’ Wikipedia page and wrote that he was “an American journalist and proponent of sexual assault if it interferes with his entertainment.” And in the subsection labeled “controversies,” someone was quick to notate his tweet. “On November 21, 2017 [sic] Dylan Byers tweeted his concern that people were leaving the news industry for engaging in sexual harassment. In a little over two hours it looked like it was going for an all time [sic] ratio with 3,000 comments vs. 326 likes,” the entry said.
As of the publishing of this blog, Wikipedia had deleted the additions to Byers’ page.
Byers would eventually delete both his original mind-boggling hot take and his clarification. “I've deleted my previous tweet. It was poorly worded and didn't properly convey my intended observation,” he explained in a third tweet. But by then it was too late because noting is gone once it’s on the internet.
