Calvin said editors at the Des Moines Register directed him to apologize in a tweet, which he said he agreed to do because he was “afraid and just trying to comply with what I was being told so I could possibly hold onto my job.”
In the tweet, Calvin apologized for “not holding myself to the same high standards as The Register holds others.”
“I regret publishing that tweet now,” Calvin told BuzzFeed News. “Because I was never trying to hold Carson to any kind of ‘higher standard’ or any kind of standard at all. I was trying to do my job as a reporter, and I think I did so to the best of my ability.”
As soon as the story broke, Calvin said he began receiving a barrage of death threats. He said HR reps at Gannett, which owns the Des Moines Register, forbade him from speaking to the media and told him to leave his apartment for his own safety. They offered to put him up in a hotel, but he stayed with a friend instead.
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