The famous television show, America’s Got Talent, has been under the microscope recently for supposedly being a toxic work environment. These claims were reported by one of the hosts from the show, Gabrielle Union. Gabrielle was reportedly fired after speaking up about what she believes in; racial equality and woman’s rights.
Being someone who watches the show, it was clear to me that Gabrielle had very strong opinions on the contestants and seemed to be particularly keen to the more ethnic contestants. I find nothing wrong in what she was trying to do for the show and that was to shed more light on some of the contestants that may have been overlooked if she had not been a judge. I am not saying that this show is racist in any way, but she was able to connect more with certain contestants than other judges on the show could.
An article posted by The Washington Post goes into more detail about what really happened behind the scenes of this incident. This article was done by Elahe Izadi and the title of it is “Gabrielle Union’s firing from ‘America’s Got Talent’ draws celebrity condemnation and an investigation”.
A statement from NBC was included in this article and states that they take matters like this very seriously and work very closely with those involved in the matter in order to get the situation resolved. This article also incorporated stories from other news sources like Variety to add credibility. Although this adds different perspectives to the article, it also states that the source of the information was anonymous. This makes it difficult to know for sure if what is being said is accurate.
The incorporation of tweets from people affected by this situation add great insight as to how big of an issue this is. People are standing up for Gabrielle for not letting anything stop her from standing up for what she believes in. Many were upset with the fact that she was getting fired for something that should not be punishable.
After reading thoroughly through this article, I find it to be fairly credible. The Washington Post is overall a very credible source, but this article in particular included some sources that were questionable to me. They did not seem to provide much information or details about what specifically happened, but more so on the reactions of those involved.
To help verify some of the information provided, the article contained several hyperlinks. One hyperlink provided leads to an article from Deadline which goes into more detail about the statement given by NBC. This is beneficial for the readers so that we are getting the whole story and not just from the eyes of Gabrielle.
I tried to find one of the first articles reported on this topic to see where it all started, but it does lack very crucial information that more recent articles provide. An article from Fox News published yesterday offers more input from the other judges on the show. It seems as though no one else felt the same way as Gabrielle did. Heidi Klum, a previous judge, said “to me, everyone treats you with utmost respect”. Terry Cruz even said that it was one of the best experiences he has ever had in his life.
Based on information from other sources, I find that the initial article from The Washington Post did not provide much information at all and was more of a reaction to the claims that were reported. Since the article title had “investigation” in it, I was anticipating more of the whole story. With that being said, I would give this article a C letter grade.
