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Baltimore Station Backpedals After Biased Report On Black Kids Swimming In Closed Pool

Twitter users felt the station unfairly criminalized a group of kids who were just trying to keep cool at a time when several city pools remain closed.
David Moye
By 

Senior Reporter, HuffPost

A Baltimore radio station is being criticized on social media for the way it reported on kids sneaking into a closed pool.

The city, like most of the country, is dealing with unrelenting heat. To make matters worse, three city pools remain closed with their gates chained because of infrastructure issues, according to local media reports.

Baltimore children are resorting to various methods of dealing with the extreme heat, including swimming in pools that are closed.

On Tuesday, WBAL NewsRadio shared footage of several Black children swimming in a closed city pool in a tweet that made them sound more like hardened criminals than children seeking some sort of relief. The station also showed several other children entering the pool grounds.

“Several children were caught breaking into one of the many Baltimore City pools that remain closed with their gates chained,” the tweet read. “The break-in was caught on Monday. Footage details the children breaking in, setting up ‘camp’, and entering the water along with a scooter.”

Many Twitter users had a big problem with the framing of the tweet ― and the possibility that the station may have spent money on a helicopter to make sure the kids were filmed in the act.

Eventually, someone handling the news station’s social media realized the original tweet wasn’t getting the intended reaction.

So the station backpedaled in a tweet suggesting that, yes, maybe the real problem is that pools are closed, not that kids are trying to keep cool.

“We are upset that kids have to go through such lengths to go for a swim,” the station’s new tweet read.

However, Twitter users were skeptical that the sentiment was genuine, with one person wondering why the station was “narcing on them” if it cared so much about the children’s plight.

WBAL NewsRadio did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

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