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Atlanta Shooting: Captain Jay Baker fired for Robert Long's 'bad day' quote, Internet blames 'dishonest clip'

After rewatching the full video, some have argued that Baker wasn't trying to offer his own sympathetic commentary, but rather repeating what Long had said in a statement

Georgia Sheriff's Captain Jay Baker, who claimed the Atlanta spa shooter Robert Aaron Long was having a 'bad day,' has been fired from his spokesperson duties for the case. This comes after Baker was bombarded by negative online comments because people thought he was trying to excuse Long's shooting rampage. Long ended up killing 8 people, six of whom were Asian women. 

WSB-TV reported that the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office, where Baker is the communications director, is currently evaluating his future in the department. Just a day before, on March 18, Baker had said during a press conference, "He (the murderer) was pretty much fed up, kind of at the end of his rope, and yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did." Social media platforms buzzed with outrage right after over Baker sympathizing with the killer. However, not everyone is convinced with the narrative that Baker, despite being a police officer, was excusing a white male's crimes. In fact, some people on Twitter argued that rewatching the full video reveals that Baker wasn't trying to offer his own sympathetic commentary, but rather repeating what Long had told him in a statement.

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Those citing the video as proof have pointed out that at about 13 minutes, 50 seconds into the clip, when the 'bad day' claims were dropped, Baker had clarified that this was Long's own explanation for his crime. Long had also told the cops that he was trying to eliminate 'temptation' that the massage parlors offered and his actions were not apparently racially charged, although they happened in the wake of anti-Asian hate crimes peaking in the country. Baker was also outed for endorsing anti-China sentiments with racially offensive Covid-19 tee shirts whose sale links he shared on Facebook.

Yet some would like to argue that Baker was merely relaying Long's excuses to the public and not sharing his own. Sharing a clip of the video, blogger Matthew Yglesias wrote: "Remember the racist cop who excused the Atlanta spa shooter by saying he had a 'really bad day'? Turns out that if you watch the video in context that’s not what happened ... he was relaying the suspect’s statement to the press as part of a briefing."

Vox journalist Aaron Rupar had shared one of the first clips of the conference on Twitter, where most users slammed Baker for his insensitive comments. Rupar too retweeted Yglesias' tweet and pointed out "This is wrong. This is the quote: 'He was pretty much fed up & kind of at the end of his rope. Yesterday was a really bad day for him & this is what he did' The cop was paraphrasing the shooter's rationale in his own words, not quoting him. Strange that folks are retconning this."

And soon journalist Jesse Singal stepped in to call out Rupar's take. He tweeted a link to Reason website's Op-ed titled "The Media Got It Wrong: Police Captain Didn't Say the Atlanta Spa Killer Was Having a 'Bad Day''' and said: "It's so weird to me that Aaron Rupar can do this and Vox just thinks it's... fine? Like, in this case you can very clearly trace the damage of this dishonest clip, and it was considerable." Now insisting that the initial statements are oft 'misleading', New York Times' Jane Coaston also tweeted: "No one ever watches the dang video in context. It was clear he was referring to what the suspect had said. I was irritated because “the suspect said this” does not, of course, equal “this is what happened” and those early statements are often misleading."

Countering claims that the media had slapped on a narrative, without context, for Baker's words, one user tweeted: "He was not 'relaying the suspect's statement'; he was summarizing the report investigators gave him after interviewing Long. Specifically, he was describing the investigators' 'impression' of Long's motivations."

In their article, Reason in a critical take on gatekeeping in journalism, said: "Numerous writers, in their zeal to assert that the spa killings were absolutely, positively the result of anti-Asian racism, wrongly dinged a police officer for declining to provide support for this theory. Baker's performance in the press conference was skewered due to a misleading clip widely circulated by the very same journalists who assert that the loss of the mainstream media's information-gatekeeping function is a serious threat to democracy. It's hard to take these people seriously when they continue to make such mistakes."