KGW journo deletes X after backlash for getting Trail Blazers broadcaster fired for posts when he was 15

Devon Haskins, the KGW-TV sports reporter whose story led the Portland Trail Blazers to fire their new play-by-play broadcaster on the day he was hired, deleted his X account on Friday after a wave of backlash against him on the online platform. After he broke the story that led to Braiden Bell losing his job, others began to dig up decade-old posts from Haskins to see what they could find.

Haskins had posted the link to his story, which reached well over 500,000 views on X before Haskins deleted his X account. Although the post could not be seen on Saturday, a post from Haskin's news director at KGW, John Tierney, had a post that reached over 1.3 million views with just 134 likes.



Sports media pundit Clay Travis said that Haskin deleted his account shortly after he said to him in response to the report, "Hey @devonhaskins please quote me on this for the newscast tonight, 'You're a bitch & should be the one getting fired.' Looking up old Tweets when someone was 15 & reporting on them like it's breaking news is journalistically indefensible. Your entire team should be ashamed."

Bell, who had been hired just hours before the story broke that he was getting fired from the Trail Blazers, said in a post after the firing, "I am deeply sorry for the language that I used on Twitter. These tweets, while wrong, were written by me 14 years ago while I was only 15 years old and have no reflection of who I am today. I do not take lightly any harm it causes now. I regret this being my first impression to many of you online, but I can take solace in knowing that the people who truly know me understand that this is not the kind of person I am. Again, I'd like to apologize to anyone who was hurt by my words and will continue to always treat people with kindness and respect."

After Bell was fired, many started digging into Haskins' past posts, with one circulating from 2012 where he made a joke about elderly women not being able to be strippers, which some called "sexist" and said that he should be fired if Bell is going to be.

User Jake Woolsey responded to Tierney in a post and said, "So brave, boys. Although if you had a shred of journalistic integrity, you would do some investigation on your own reporters tweets from years ago that are incredibly misogynistic and ageist. We must do better."

The post from Haskins was from 2012, and said, "It's Election Day!! The only day it's ok to see old ladies working the polls!! #vote."

Bell, in 2012 when he was 15, had written on then-Twitter: "I'm not racist at all.. But not gonna lie.. Asian people piss me off! Hahaha #Honest." He also had a few posts that used the terms "slut" and "whores" in 2012 and 2013.

Many mocked the Trail Blazers for even firing Bell after the posts were made public. One X user whose post went viral said, "Sad news: I’ve been fired by the Portland Trail Blazers for typing 58008 into a calculator and holding it upside down in 2009."