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A Dallas journalist said her use of the word “bruh” to address the mayor has left her without a job.
Meghan Mangrum said she was sacked as Dallas Morning News education reporter after she responded to a Feb. 11 tweet from Mayor Eric Johnson claiming local media had “no interest” in reporting a drop in violent crime.
Multiple media outlets — including The Dallas Morning News — had covered the crime trend, and Mangrum called Johnson out.
“Bruh, national news is always going to chase the trend. Cultivate relationships with quality local news partnerships,” Mangrum wrote in her Twitter response.
“Standing up for my colleagues and the work that we do, when I know we’re doing good and honest work, is something I pride myself on and something that I look for in my colleagues and in my workplace as well,” the reporter later told D Magazine.
Calling Johnson “bruh” led to criticism from the mayor and his chief of staff.
“Gotta love when folks let their inherent biases show. I get to be addressed as ‘bruh’ by someone who writes for my daily local paper whom I’ve never met.🤷🏾♂️,” Johnson wrote on Twitter.
Mangrum, who is white, said the Morning News executive editor, who is Black, asked if she would use the word if Johnson was white. She said she responded that she would still use the word to address the mayor.
“Bruh,” made popular in part due to memes on the defunct social media platform Vine, is meant to “convey frustration or disappointment at something,” according to KnowYourMeme.
Dictionary.com notes that the slang word has ties to Black English and that it “spread as an interjection variously expressing surprise or dismay since at least the 2010s.”
Mangrum had previously used “bruh” toward “all sorts of accounts,” D Magazine noted.
Mangrum was fired by the Dallas newspaper three days after the tweet for violating the paper’s social media policy, according to D Magazine. She said the paper didn’t specify what she violated in the policy.
In an email to HuffPost, Mangrum wrote that she is devastated to have lost her job and disappointed with management’s response. She added that she thinks her ouster “is one alarming incident in a broader story of the challenges facing journalists” at her former paper.
Her dismissal came on a day that included a Dallas News Guild protest that she helped organize. The union filed a complaint on her behalf with the National Labor Relations Board, Mangrum said.
HuffPost couldn’t immediately reach the newspaper or Johnson’s office for comment.
