South Dakota Journalist’s Extremely Ill-Advised Prank Call Being Treated As A Criminal Act
from the is-stupidity-a-crime? dept
First off, full disclosure: I live in this state. It’s one of those upper Midwestern states no one seems to live in and yet they do. I continue to endure the Trump-loving antics of our current governor, Kristi Noem, who somehow managed not to kill off a large percentage of the state’s population with her years of inaction during the COVID crisis.
While not encouraging/signing performative legislation, Governor Noem also finds time to get her personal phone hacked. Or, at least, that’s what she claimed earlier this year:
Following the leak of Governor Kristi Noem and her family’s personal Social Security numbers and other private information by the January 6th Committee, Governor Noem’s personal cell phone number has been hacked and used to make hoax calls. Governor Noem had no involvement in these calls.
It’s true the January 6th committee left Social Security numbers exposed when it published documents related to its investigation. How this led to Noem’s phone being hacked, however, is left to our imagination. The official press release suggests the two are related, but says something about “hacked” and says something about “making hoax calls” but never actually connects the two assertions.
What’s being treated as a criminal act by a local prosecutor in South Dakota doesn’t appear to have anything to do with Noem’s phone being hacked. In fact, it doesn’t appear to have anything to do with any recognizable criminal act.
A former Pierre-based reporter is facing charges for a January prank call.
Former KOTA and Dakota News Now reporter Austin Goss, 26, was arrested and charged with making threatening, harassing or misleading contacts, which is a class one misdemeanor. Goss appeared in court Thursday.
There’s no hacking here. That much is apparent from the arrest affidavit [PDF], which makes it clear the recipient of the call wasn’t being threatened or even credibly harassed. He may have been (initially) misled, but that’s about it.
The prank call was allegedly made to former South Dakota GOP chairman Dan Lederman. The alleged crime — “Making Threatening, Harassing, or Misleading Contacts” — doesn’t appear to cover what happened here. The law criminalizes spoofing phone numbers, but this “spoof” was made apparent by the end of the rambling, incoherent message delivered by this particularly stupid journalist to Lederman.
Here’s the phone call, as detailed in the charging affidavit:
“So now, you answer me this… Between the hours of midnight yesterday, and right now, where they disappear to?.. Did you check your basement? How many boxes of the Moderna where there?… Oh you think this is funny?… Yo! You’re making me say way too much on this line already… Marculo’s on the line here too. You best quit messing with me!… You know what? I’m going to tell you, I know what you said the other day…. You telling me, you didn’t tell Vito, that you were going to try to move the three boxes of that AstraZeneca outside this family?… You saying you ain’t said that?!… Oh, I’m getting so angry… You saying, you aint’ said that?!… You come here. Say it to my face…. Yeah, yeah I want you to say it to my face!… Hahahahahaha! You’ve just been pranked by PrankDial.com.”
It was definitely a dumb thing to do. But Lederman was informed by the end of the call that it was a spoof call. The “tone and tenor of the audio” (which Lederman claims “caused him concern for his safety”) is clearly ridiculous, what with its use of stereotypical Italian first names to infer some sort of mob involvement in moving around boxes of (presumably) COVID vaccines.
Dakota News Now and KOTA both terminated the reporter, which is definitely the proper response. But should this be a criminal act? It’s clear from context — not to mention that last lines delivered in the spoof call — that this was a prank. Yes, it probably annoyed Dan Lederman. But even if he was annoyed enough to contact law enforcement, there’s no reason cops and prosecutors should have decided this is a case worth prosecuting.
It’s a waste of limited resources in a state full of limited resources. Let the former journalist suffer through the future he’s created for himself, one that will surely be wanting for decent employment opportunities. But don’t give credence to Governor Noem’s “my phone has been hacked” speculations by pushing this case through the criminal justice system.
Filed Under: austin goss, criminal, dan lederman, kristi noem, prank calls, south dakota
Comments on “South Dakota Journalist’s Extremely Ill-Advised Prank Call Being Treated As A Criminal Act”
Goss plead guilty to disorderly conduct
https://www.thedakotascout.com/p/reporter-who-used-noems-number-for
Today I found out prank call companies are a thing.
More proof that to be “GOP” means being thin-skinned and cowardly… and stupid (among other things any sane person–i.e. not “GOP”–would find undesirable).
Hard disagree. Out of all the harmless shit, this ain’t it.
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When I think of people I would want working as part of the press, someone willing to do an immature, poorly planned, dumb-as-rocks prank phone call and turn themselves into a story (intentionally or not) wouldn’t exactly rank high on my list.
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Depends on the target, doesn’t it? If the victim had been Herr Trump or Putin, we would have applauded.
Noem is a public figure, and should take this childish crap on the chin. All politicians should. Mocking politicians is important in a free society.
I don’t find what happened here funny or clever, but prank phone calls to public figures has a long history. Rolling one’s eyes is the appropriate response.
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Not…really? Unprofessionalism is unprofessionalism regardless of who one aims their immaturity towards.
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Examples where prank calls have been celebrated
Pranksters called the son of one of Putin’s closest allies and told him he is being enlisted in the army — but he refused
Trump ‘prank-called by Piers Morgan impersonator’
Russian pranksters say they fooled Elton John with Putin call
Boris Johnson targeted by Russia prank caller
There was another one where the perpetrator who tricked our ridiculous and incredibly corrupt former PM into carrying a coffee mug with a misogynist slur on it, was sacked, but we have a comedy news team called The Chaser which specialises in exactly this kind of silliness, and they are national heroes because they repeatedly puncture the foolish, pompous, and corrupt.
So style is important, but so, I repeat, is the target. If someone had tricked Putin carrying that profane mug, we’d be cheering.
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Thin-skinned tyrants like this are exactly the sort of people I want exposed by the press.
What you want is negative peace.
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There are better ways to do this.
This is not one of the ways, chief.
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Tell me you’ve never had a real job without telling me you’ve never had a real job.
I wouldn’t hire this reporter to flip burgers, let alone do actual journalism.
And now this:
Can’t be arsed to even create a credible web site. Well, they’ve got plenty of company. Most of Mastodon seems similarly “let us use javascript or go away”.
Because bad elements have seen our Social Security Numbers all of these bad things will happen!!!
Where have I been accused of this before?
Wow, SD must have thousands of cases against all the telephone marketers and scammers.
It sure seems that the vast majority of the GOP have no sense of humor.
Fake news!
Everyone knows that South Dakota is a myth, a goverment conspiracy alongside the moon landings, a spherical Earth, and that no aliens were at Area 54.
We all know that the moon landings never happened, the Earth is flat, Area 54 is an alien holiday resort, and South Dakota doesn’t exist.
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If the Earth is flat, where’s the evidence that it’s being held up by 4 elephants riding a giant sea turtle that’s currently swimming around space?
You can’t have a flat earth without that!
And how would it be affected by meteors? Is Lord Mandalore right?
/s, just in case no one gets that this is both a Discworld reference AND referencing a legendary Tweet…
“was arrested and charged with making threatening, harassing or misleading contacts, which is a class one misdemeanor.”
I receive a few to a half dozen of these calls every day.
I doubt any of the perps are arrested for it, I never answer these scam / telemarketing calls.
I wonder, does “misleading contacts” include spoofing caller id?
misleading? seriously?
How is “misleading” someone against the law? Anything could be misleading because language is not an exact science. It is by nature fuzzy.
Conservatives’ sense of humor is laughing when somebody gets hurt. Probably has something to do with all those sticks they keep inserting into themselves.
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Nah, they’re just violent assholes.
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