SPJ Defends Misogynist Don Lemon; Freedom Forum Wisely Doesn’t

I bet $1,000 to a journalism charity that Don Lemon wasn't even a member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). Stay tuned!

The pressing national debate over whether so-called “journalist” Don Lemon is a walking mockery of journalistic credibility and ethics apparently is coming down to which U.S. 1st Amendment advocacy organization one chooses to subscribe:

  1. The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), a D.C. based trade association, of which I’m a dues-paying member, or
  1. The Freedom Forum, a not-for-profit based in D.C. that states as its mission, “to foster First Amendment freedoms for all.” (italics / bold added, for emphasis)

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re well-aware of one Don Lemon, who was fired from CNN in April 2023 apparently for cause, due to being an abject bigot, possibly among other documented infractions.

And now, Lemon is in new legal trouble for running his mouth and his little video-camera, ad naueam, before, during, and after storming a St. Paul house of worship where religious services were in progress… resulting in his later indictment and arrest last week on federal charges for violating the FACE Act.

Granted, I’m no fan of bigot Don Lemon and his hyper-partisan rhetoric, which he routinely spews with abandon while demonizing entire swaths of the American citizenry on baseless accusations, via his customary race-baiting and hate, which I personally consider appalling.

As such, I don’t consider Lemon to be an ethical representation of what a “journalist” is or should be, since he cannot be bothered to subscribe to even the most basic tenets of the SPJ Code of Ethics. 

Instead, Mr. Lemon is an editorialist and a propagandist – which he has every right to be, under his own personal 1st Amendment rights and protections and his U.S. commercial rights to monetize his hate for financial self-gain… all legal, of course.

What this clown does NOT have a right to do or be is a violator of OTHER AMERICANS’ 1st Amendment rights of freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from fear, and freedom of peaceful assembly for the same, on privately held church property on U.S. soil.

Sadly, however, my journalism trade association, SPJ, inexplicably disagrees and is now on-the-record as Lemon lovers.

The day of Mr. Lemon’s arrest following his federal indictment by a grand jury of Minnesota citizens, SPJ issued a national statement – replete with a nationwide PR campaign that clearly was pre-orchestrated / pre-coordinated, in lock-step alignment with numerous other journalism trade groups of apparently like-minded left-wing bent – to laud Mr. Lemon as the alpha-and-omega of journalistic virtue and blameless, halo-wearing news-gathering for the public good.

Interestingly, SPJ does not offer – even for members, unless I’m missing it – a fully searchable online membership directory, so I’m unable to see a current record of whether Mr. Lemon even bothers to pay membership dues to SPJ, as I do.

But I’m willing to bet a $1,000 donation either to the SPJ Foundation OR to the Freedom Forum charity – pending documented proof, of course – that Mr. Lemon was NOT in January 2026 an SPJ member and therefore made no pretense of even bothering with SPJ’s Code of Ethics.

Which would make perfect sense, of course, since Mr. Lemon clearly does not observe, must less comply with, SPJ’s code, as per his video-taped chicanery from St. Paul, Minnesota.

(If Lemon was a dues-paying member of SPJ on the date of his activist raid upon Cities Church, then I will forward my $1,000 donation to the SPJ Foundation… but SPJ must also be obligated to observe and render a specific, public response to my weeks-long ethics complaint against Don Lemon as a fellow SPJ member that I registered to SPJ as a dues-paying member myself. If he was not an SPJ member at the time of his church misconduct, then the Freedom Forum will receive my donation.)

Meanwhile, my new best friends over at the Freedom Forum were having none of it last week, with Don Lemon’s hijinks of clear non-journalism activist behaviors.

While the Freedom Forum did not issue comment about Don Lemon by name, the advocacy organization issued an exceptionally well-crafted statement and article on January 30, 2026, entitled, “Can You Protest Inside or Near a Church? First Amendment Analysis.”

The Freedom Forum’s fair-minded analysis came to the clear conclusion that, No, Virginia, there is no Journalism Santa Claus who’s going to deliver to the likes of journalist impersonator Don Lemon a get-out-of-indictment-free card, for trouncing the rights of everyday Americans who had their religious freedom rights obliterated by this self-serving, self-aggrandizing yahoo and his fellow co-activists.

What sticks in my craw about this whole SPJ PR debacle – totally self-inflicted! – is that I had flagged the Don Lemon issue, on ethics-violation grounds, with SPJ national leadership more than a week prior to their issuance of their bizarre pro-Lemon statement.

I wrote to SPJ leaders on Wednesday, January 21, 2026, as follows:

Hope all is safe and warm for each of you as we get into this blustery cold! 

I wanted to reach out with an item for SPJ’s advocacy consideration.

Has anyone else in the membership brought up the Don Lemon incident in the Minnesota church over the weekend? I ask, because it seems clear to me that Mr. Lemon’s choices and behaviors in that raid on the house of worship by anti-ICE protestors appeared to go far beyond that of an objective journalist simply seeking to report a news event organically as it unfolded.

Instead, by all appearances, Mr. Lemon (formerly of CNN and with 2 million followers on Instagram alone) interjected himself into the story… even to the point of becoming a fellow protestor himself, adopting the rhetoric and talking points of the protestors in defaming worshipers as “white supremacists” and other pejoratives.

I even saw video footage of Mr. Lemon just prior to the church raid with a ringleader of the protest as she explained exactly what they were about to do in (illegally) raiding the house of worship as religious services were known to be in progress. As Mr. Lemon approached the protest leader to interview her, he leaned in and kissed her. (That’s hardly the behavior of an objective reporter.)

Mr. Lemon also was seen outside the church just after-the-fact, speaking with smug satisfaction of the trauma he participated in inflicting upon innocent worshippers – including young children and families – who were seen exiting the building. His remarks essentially were – to paraphrase – “they had it coming to them” and “they deserve their trauma.”

Another photo widely shown in other media postings documents a small child in the church crying and seemingly inconsolable, in the wake of the raid.  

Mr. Lemon’s conduct – prior to the event, on-site during the protestors’ trespass, and post-event in his follow-on commentary – appeared to break SPJ’s Code of Ethics, as per these tenets:

  • Avoid stereotyping. Journalists should examine the ways their values and experiences may shape their reporting.
  • Label advocacy and commentary.
  • Never deliberately distort facts or context.
  • Balance the public’s need for information against potential harm or discomfort. Pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance or undue intrusiveness.
  • Show compassion for those who may be affected by news coverage. Use heightened sensitivity when dealing with juveniles, victims of sex crimes, and sources or subjects who are inexperienced or unable to give consent. Consider cultural differences in approach and treatment.
  • Recognize that legal access to information differs from an ethical justification to publish or broadcast.
  • Realize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than public figures and others who seek power, influence or attention.
  • Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity, even if others do.
  • Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived. Disclose unavoidable conflicts.
  • Explain ethical choices and processes to audiences. Encourage a civil dialogue with the public about journalistic practices, coverage and news content.
  • Acknowledge mistakes and correct them promptly and prominently.
  • Expose unethical conduct in journalism, including within their organizations.
  • Abide by the same high standards they expect of others.

I think it’s incumbent upon SPJ to issue a public advisory to remind the journalism profession of its obligations to label in full transparency a so-called “journalist’s” personal, partisan-political stances and biased activism, and to decouple those opinion-editorial pieces of content from false claims of legitimate “news” reporting.

In addition, “journalists” should never openly and willfully interject themselves and personally participate as co-conspirators in a third-party protest… and then falsely claim they’ve done so under the banner of objective “journalism.”

In short, Mr. Lemon can’t have it both ways.  Either he’s a legitimate journalist or he’s a protestor-activist himself.  He needs to pick a lane and then behave (and disclose) accordingly.

Diverting from these SPJ standards – and openly allowing alleged “reporters” to divert from those standards with zero consequence or accountability – only harms the public trust in journalism writ large, which is something that is harmful to a well-functioning democracy.

Happy to discuss further.

Best, MB

The written response I then received from SPJ leaders on January 22, gave me information that I now must seriously question as being false and misleading.

It pains me tremendously to have to make this observation.

The leadership acknowledged to me — in writing — my “careful walk-through” of how I believed “the conduct at issue intersects with specific tenets of the SPJ Code of Ethics.”

I was told in their e-mail, however, that SPJ would NOT BE COMMENTING on the Don Lemon matter due to “underlying facts” still being at odds with claims by various parties.

SPJ leadership stated to me (bold added, for emphasis):

“At this point, given conflicting accounts, an incomplete public record, and Don Lemon’s own statements that he was present in a journalistic capacity, SPJ is continuing to monitor developments rather than issuing a public advisory or taking a position on the underlying facts. As an ethics organization, we try to be especially cautious about weighing in while key factual questions remain unsettled.

“That said, your concerns about transparency, perceived conflicts, labeling of advocacy versus reporting, and minimizing harm are all grounded in the Code, and they are issues we take seriously as part of our ongoing work to promote ethical journalism and public trust.

“Thank you again for sharing your perspective and for flagging this for our consideration. I’m glad to keep the conversation open as the situation develops.”

I took SPJ’s comments to me to mean:

  • …if an indictment was indeed issued and a grand jury of Minnesota citizens indeed elected to indict Don Lemon, that SPJ would wait for facts to be presented in the courtroom and for proper legal adjudication of the matter to be complete first, prior to SPJ rendering public ethics commentary on the matter;
  • …SPJ values – and would value in this case – legal confirmation of facts over expediency of proclamations about obvious ethics problems brought to bear by Lemon’s choices and conduct;
  • …no SPJ “public advisory” or “taking” of a “position” would occur until such time that facts were indeed firmly established (irrespective of the concurrent fact that Lemon’s behaviors and statements were video-recorded and posted publicly online by Lemon himself, for all to see, documenting Lemon’s choices and behaviors and verbatim words at serious odds with SPJ’s ethics code, as per tenets I cited in my e-mail of Jan. 21).

But then, the next thing I knew, SPJ’s pro-Lemon PR campaign was unleashed the following week, on Friday, January 30, literally within MINUTES of Mr. Lemon’s arrest / indictment being reported on nationwide news media.

So much for being “cautious” and waiting until all “the underlying facts” were in hand!

Apparently, all Lemon needed was to claim “journalist” status, and SPJ folded like a cheap lawn chair, even over the previously documented and SPJ-acknowledged ethics concerns of one of SPJ’s own dues-paying members. (And I hardly believe I’m the only one.)

Also apparently, by SPJ’s own brand of logic, Lemon could even proclaim himself to BE a lemon and thus be entitled to U.S. federal citrus farm subsidies – and SPJ apparently would go to bat for precisely such entitlements, too.

That’s how jackass-crazy this situation has devolved.

But too late for SPJ’s reputational credibility… We’re now in jackass-out-of-barn territory, over on the Lemon farm.

SPJ has now unleashed a crisis upon its own moral authority, not to mention yet another public-distrust crisis for the Fourth Estate writ large, which is even more tragic.

And why? 

Because apparently, a sexist male New York millionaire who trafficks every day in his race and sexual-identity status is deemed 100% more important to SPJ leadership’s priorities than a female moderate conservative SPJ dues-payer of more modest means in Appalachia, who has ethics concerns about sexist-male-millionaire-from-New York that SPJ even appears to admit are valid by not offering one single counterpoint.

I suppose that when it comes to non-partisanship and basic human decency – until I’m proven otherwise – I need to take a closer look at supporting more actively the one, singular journalism and pro-1st Amendment entity that treats everyone with equal respect and dignity.

Time to pop the popcorn, because what America is about to witness in a federal Minnesota court room may have major implications for how America’s “democracy” experiment is going to go, for the duration.

The key questions:

  1. Is “journalist” a newly decreed gilded class of U.S. citizen (or non-citizen, for that matter) who enjoys special rights and privileges allowing full-on violations and railroading of non-journalist U.S. citizens’ rights, with impunity?
  2. Can anyone call HIMself a “journalist,” even while breaking both key journalism ethics tenets AND standing U.S. law?
  3. What line of demarcation does it require to be rendered and decried a faux journalist, to the extent that SPJ and like-minded journalism trade organizations will call out bad behaviors and practices by “one of its own,” whether dues-paying or not?

    Over the weeks, I asked SPJ leadership — in light of their prior response to me that I considered false and misleading — to please re-address this situation with me.

    I requested of SPJ an internal investigation of how the pro-Lemon statement came about, in light of what was communicated to me by SPJ previously, writing:

    STAY TUNED! 

    Mary Beth West is a 30-year public relations practitioner and has been a citizen journalist documenting major ethics violations in the PR industry since 2017, particularly by industry association PRSA. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Tennessee School of Journalism, where she was named “Student of the Year” in 1994, upon graduating from the School’s PR sequence.

    She can be contacted at mb@marybethwest.com and followed on X: @marybethwest.

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