Blaze Radio’s station manager said she will not step down from her position at Tuesday’s station meeting. Rae’Lee Klein’s refusal to resign follows a unanimous decision by the Blaze board of directors to no longer recognize her as station manager.
In the first station-wide meeting of the year held over Zoom, Klein, Blaze board members and student members discussed a tweet from Klein that fractured the Blaze Community, leaving it at a standstill.
Klein retweeted an article from the New York Post on Saturday about the arrest warrant issued for Jacob Blake, who was shot by police in early August in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Her deleted tweet read “Always more to the story, folks. Please read this article to get the background of Jacob Blake’s warrant. You’ll be quite disgusted.”
Cronkite students and alumni immediately took to Twitter and criticized Klein for disseminating information that some thought was irrelevant and insensitive toward Blake’s shooting.
Blaze’s board doesn’t have the power to remove Klein from her position, the school and university do. However, Vanessa Ruiz, a director of Cronkite News, said that Cronkite wants this issue to be resolved within the club before the school intervenes.
“We feel that you all have the right to dictate what happens in this organization,” Ruiz said. “However, if the standstill continues…Interim Dean Gilger does have the authority to step in and make a decision.”
The board said that Klein’s continued refusal to step down has made it “impossible” for Blaze to properly start producing content for the year.
“We know that this is adversely affecting the members of our station,” Ethan Jordan, Blaze’s sports director, said. “At some point there will be a decision made. And either there will be a station run by Rae’Lee with a new board of directors or there will be a station run by this board of directors with a new station manager.”
Blaze radio board members said that they are open to further conversations and will consider different options, but even if it delays production, their stance on the matter will not change.
Klein said in the meeting Tuesday night the tweet was “not about race” and that she shared the article to shed light on the sexual assault allegation brought against Blake, not to condone or justify his shooting. She also said that she refuses to step down because trying to pursue both sides of a sensitive story is not grounds for removal.
“With being a leader comes the responsibility of telling the truth,” she said. “And just because the truth can be misinterpreted or misconstrued, does not make it any less important of a story to tell.”
Students in the meeting and on Twitter called the last line of Klein’s tweet “problematic” and “biased,” and said she should have made it more clear that she was talking about the alleged sexual assault in her tweet, without attempting to justify what happened to Blake.
Students also felt that the tweet alienated them from the Blaze community and created a space where they longer felt welcomed by or comfortable with Klein’s leadership.
Gideon Kariuki, a sophomore Blaze member and self-identified journalist of color, told Klein, “This hurts.”
“When I saw [the tweet], I saw years and years and years of journalism failing communities like mine. I saw years of discrimination,” Kariuki said.
Kiarra Spottsville, the president of the ASU chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists, said in the meeting that Klein is entitled to her own opinions, but there are sometimes unfair consequences for tweeting as she did.
“I saw that someone said that what you tweeted wasn’t racist because you weren’t slandering or saying a slur or telling people to rot in hell because of their race. Racism comes in a lot of different forms,” Spottsville said. “Right now, newsrooms and journalists are going through a lot. There are very real issues going on that you will never be affected by.”
Kiarra said that as president of NABJ, if she had tweeted things that made her own e-board members upset, or made members feel unsafe, that she would do the right thing and step down.
“You harmed people so you have to take responsibility for that,” Spottsville said. “That’s great that you have been having these tough conversations for 72 hours. But for people of color, that is our entire lives.”
Several other students said they were concerned that Blaze’s board of directors was unable to separate personal feelings from what should have been a professional decision, but the board said multiple times that their decision was not political and was free from personal bias.
“This is about what this means to our student body, what we want Blaze Radio to stand for, what we want everyone in Blaze to feel. We want them to feel welcome,” Jordan Spurgeon, the production director of Blaze, said.
Jordan re-emphasized Spurgeon’s point, saying that Klein hurt the trust of many Blaze members. He said the board “heard the cries of Blaze members” who were deeply affected by Klein’s tweet, and felt that the station could not continue with Klein heading their station.
Jordan also said that the Blaze board believes that there is a majority of station members who would not feel comfortable with Klein at the helm, which was a main factor in the board’s decision.
“Professionally, we felt this station could no longer function properly, as we felt it should, with Rae’Lee Klein as station manager,” he said.
The board said that it does not want to ruin Klein’s journalism career in any way, it merely wants to acknowledge that she is no longer fit to lead the Blaze team. They also said it recognizes that a final decision is not going to please everyone and made it clear that if Klein stays on as station manager, all six directors of the board would step down.
However, Klein said she feels the option is for the board to continue production with her still in a leadership position at the station.
“It’s a learning lesson for me… I know what the intent of the tweet was regardless of the backlash it received,” Klein said. “I trust Cronkite to do what they determine is best. But this is already getting media attention, and the longer this gets dragged on, the worse it’s going to get.”
Pat Fortuna, a sophomore and member of Blaze, addressed Klein’s claim that she had never made anyone feel uncomfortable at the station prior to this tweet.
“You said at the start that ‘If you really think I have really done anything racist, go back and look for a time that I made someone uncomfortable based on the color of your skin,’” Fortuna said. “This happening now and the way you backpedaled since it happened shows me that you don’t realize your own blindness.”
But other students at the meeting defended that Klein’s actions were an expression of free speech because the tweet was made on her personal account, and that the tweet did not detract from the Black Lives Matter movement or say anything explicitly racist.
Jose Tapia, a listener during Blaze’s zoom meeting, asked the Blaze board of directors if they valued the truth.
“Let’s say the truth is represented in the article, which is backed by legal ramifications of the restraining order, then why is it controversial?” Tapia said. “If Rae’Lee wanted to share the truth, and the truth sometimes offends … that doesn’t make it not the truth. You can’t let your emotions drive you as a journalistic organization. The facts will die in that environment.”
Blaze still intends to have a meeting discussing their plans for content and shows during the semester, but felt this incident had to be addressed first.
“We have plans and we will be sharing them very soon, but this moment is not the place and time,” Spurgeon said.
As of this time, no final decision has been made, and Klein still holds her position.
Contact the reporter at flflaher@asu.edu.
