Sportswriter’s credentials revoked after racial tweet at Duke basketball game

A Duke University student is accusing a sports reporter of tweeting a racial comment and attaching a photo of her and her friends without their permission at a Blue Devils men’s basketball game.

John Stansberry, who falsely identified himself as a College Insider reporter, allegedly took a photo of Greta Chen, a Duke first-year student, and her friends at the Dec. 2 game against South Dakota in Cameron Indoor Stadium. The photo was tweeted along with a racial comment, The Chronicle, Duke’s student newspaper, reported Monday. College Insider said Stansberry is not employed by the publication and has not been for several years.

Chen and her friends were standing behind Stansberry at the game, according to the Chronicle report, and noticed that he was tweeting about them when they looked over his shoulder.

Chen was standing in the front row of Cameron Indoor Stadium, right behind the reporters, according to a post she made on Facebook. She posted two screenshots of Stansberry’s tweets, who used the Twitter handle @LonelyTailgater.

One tweet reads, “The Asian chick Cameron Crazies behind me are openly swooning over Grayson Allen the way their moms swooned over Cheap Trick.”

The other tweet is a photo of Chen and her friends accompanied by the text, “I haven’t been this scrunched up with Asian chicks since I came out of my Korean mother’s womb.”

Stansberry apparently has since deleted his Twitter account.

Stansberry had media passes to the game on Dec. 2 and two other non-Atlantic Coast Conference games in Cameron this season, said Michael Schoenfeld, Duke’s vice president for public affairs and government relations.

Those credentials are now “revoked, and his employer was informed,” Schoenfeld said, adding that the Duke athletics department acted as soon as it could confirm Stansberry’s identity.

“If he requests credentials again, we will not honor it,” said Jon Jackson, Duke’s senior associate athletics director for external affairs. “Based on his actions, he will not have the [future] opportunity to be in Cameron.”

Confirmation of Stansberry’s actions came from the photos Chen posted to Facebook, Schoenfeld said.

“If you’re going to tweet offensive things, don’t do it from the one place in Cameron where your identity can be confirmed, and then delete your account as soon as you’re discovered,” Schoenfeld said.

Schoenfeld also said campus administrators don’t think Stansberry was a regular at Duke games.

Web archives indicate that Stansberry has been affiliated with College Insider – which is aligned with CBS Sports – for about 20 years. The site has been on the web since 1996.

Jackson said Duke officials have talked to their counterparts at College Insider. He declined to discuss details of their conversation.

The athletics department learned of the incident on Dec. 4, “the Monday following the game,” and “followed up on it immediately” to figure out who was involved and talk with student groups, Jackson said.

The “Cheap Trick” reference in one of the tweets Chen criticized was an apparent allusion to the late-1970s record “Cheap Trick at Budokan,” a live album documenting the band Cheap Trick’s 1978 concert appearances in Tokyo’s Nippon Budokan judo hall. As mixed and released, the recording includes prominent crowd noise.

This story was originally published December 19, 2017 at 12:50 PM with the headline "Sportswriter’s credentials revoked after racial tweet at Duke basketball game."