What happens when people say you’re the CEO killer?

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As the nation watched the incompetent investigating techniques of the NYPD play out cartoonishly last week with scuba masks in ponds and nonchalant peering under bushes, a nonprofit received an email. The note sent by tabloid TMZ last Thursday to the general inbox of More Perfect Union, a progressive nonprofit news organization covering American labor and economic issues, asked if they could verify the employment of staff journalist Sean Morrow. The reporter didn’t say why.

Naturally Morrow was confused, so he called up the reporter himself. She explained the reason for her query: “Have you seen that your name is being tied to the murder of the CEO in New York?” she asked, referring to Brian Thompson, the United Healthcare CEO who was shot and killed on December 4th. Morrow asked the reporter who had said this, and according to her, a few people had written to TMZ to say, “Sean Morrow of More Perfect Union is the killer.” This was days before 26-year-old Luigi Mangione was apprehended by police in a Pennsylvania McDonald’s.

Having known Morrow for the better part of a decade, I had to give him a call to talk about a truly bananas situation—especially since a few years back he, “accidentally made national news with $8, 9 words, and 10 minutes.” He explained how a video he produced for work last year about United Healthcare’s scheme of rationing care to rake in billions of dollars may have inadvertently attracted negative attention during a time when authorities were desperate for answers. But was he entirely shocked? Not exactly.

Our conversation is below, condensed for length and clarity.

MARISA KABAS, THE HANDBASKET: What goes through your mind when a tabloid tells you that you're on a list of suspects in the manhunt for the most wanted killer in America?

SEAN MORROW, MORE PERFECT UNION: When I heard that that's why they had contacted my workplace, my first thought was that they were trying to get me on having made insensitive comments or something about the CEO—which I actually had been pretty careful about. I had not made any insensitive comments. So when they said to me that multiple people have reached out and said “you're the killer,” my first instinct was to laugh. If you listen to the clip, I actually do laugh and say that's absurd.

But after I got off the phone, as it started to sink in I was like, oh, I might have NYPD visiting my apartment tonight. Even though I know I'm completely innocent, I might have to go through some form of a subpoena or discovery into my personal communications. Which again, there's no guilt there, but that's not something anybody wants to go through.

KABAS: Right. And as soon as you hear the cops are involved with anything, your antenna goes up.

MORROW: Yeah, exactly. The NYPD isn't necessarily known for being the best at their jobs. They're not necessarily known for being the most ethical, and specific officers aren't known for having the best discipline with their service weapon. So, I feel like that sounds almost narcissistic or blowing up the seriousness of it, but, you know, an NYPD officer comes to my home and I'm just not thinking and touch my pocket too quickly, I could be killed.

KABAS: Right. And that’s a very legitimate concern. Especially since, like I said, this is like the biggest story in the country. Could you ever have imagined that you would somehow be personally involved in the story?

MORROW: Whenever there's anything like this, once the suspect’s found, people look through their social media. And I’m like, ‘please don't have retweeted some video we made’ or something, which turned out to not be the case. But when the shooting first happened, one of my first thoughts was like, ‘oh no, we've covered them negatively. I feel like this is gonna possibly escalate in a way that might be unfortunate.’

KABAS: What made you think that?!

MORROW: I think that we're entering a media landscape where there is a lot of that happening, right? So when you see right wing violence, you do often find that those people were getting all gassed up by Ben Shapiro or whatnot. And that seems like a very different thing, obviously because it's more hateful. But here it seems like people might be pointing these things out in the same way. We might be coming to a point where it's like, ‘oh, these people were criticizing them, and then this guy went and did this. Maybe we need to silence those people.’ No one wants all that attention on them.

I was, of course, thinking about the greater issues and everything. But that did occur to me when the news first broke that morning, that people who criticized the [healthcare] industry might be scrutinized.

KABAS: There's been a fierce debate over whether or not it's ok to condone what the shooter did. Where do you fall on that spectrum?

MORROW: I don't want to say I condone it. What is considered violence? What is considered killing? I think you've written about this. The man whose life was taken was going into work every day and choosing to do something that he didn't need to be doing to make a profit by ending lives early. It wasn't direct; it was an indirect thing. He wasn't pressing a button that was literally killing people. But he was denying people care to increase profit margins. So of course I'm not going to say I condone anything. But I don't condone what United Healthcare does every day either.

KABAS: And I think there's a difference between condoning and understanding the feelings that this is eliciting from people.

MORROW: Absolutely. And I think it's a lot easier to understand rage towards healthcare companies than it is to understand the desire to accumulate further wealth through the denial of care. Right?

KABAS: You’ve talked about your personal experience with the health care system when your mom was dying from cancer last year. So many people have these so-called villain origin stories. Do you think that that's what's driving so much of the reaction in this moment?

MORROW: Yeah, I think a lot of people were personally hurt by this. In my situation, I don't feel that my mom was killed by inadequate care. By the time she went to the emergency room, she was done basically. She didn't get the care she needed by her own choice. But I think everyone has a story about this. 

When I told people I was investigated because I've been critical of the health insurance industry or that people who were critical of the health insurance industry were being considered suspects, pretty much everyone made the same immediate joke: ‘Isn't that everybody?’ Everyone thinks it's a fair joke because it's such a universal thing.

KABAS: Right. And it's just so strange how something as culturally taboo as murder is something that prompted everyone to finally be really open and honest about their feelings about the healthcare industry.

MORROW: I think it's something that really unites the country and that's why it's so surprising that we haven't seen better change. I mean, surprising is the wrong word. I know why there isn't better change. It's due to the power of corporate lobbyists. They have a bigger voice in our government than the people do. But everyone's upset about this.

I'll say, I've been in media for my whole life. And I used to work at NowThis and I'd occasionally do videos about social issues or cultural issues, like ‘Why Black Lives Matter is good’ or whatever. And I would get death threats and hate from that. But when you cover corporate greed, especially around health care, it's almost universal support. You get a few little people every once in a while saying like, ‘well, they need to make a profit. That's the way the system works,’ or some bullshit. But for the most part, everyone's like, ‘Yeah, this is messed up. It shouldn't be like this.’ I think once people realize they're all kind of on the same side and once we all kind of unite there, that's what we need to make a change.

KABAS: In a Washington Post interview you said, “If a journalist calmly and truthfully explaining the problems with an industry with no embellishment comes off as a threat or comes off as a motive, then perhaps that industry is the problem.” How is this experience going to impact the way you see your role as a journalist?

MORROW: Honestly, I am not gonna let this impact me. I could see how somebody might want to step back for a second. I might be a little bit more careful with the exact language I use for a couple of weeks out, partially of respect, but I'm not gonna let this affect me. We're still gonna keep telling the truth about these companies. If me reading a quote from your earnings call sounds like a threat, then maybe you need to think about what you're saying in your earnings call more than you should be thinking about me.

KABAS: How does your company feel about this whole thing?

MORROW: I think it's part of our mission, right? I think we're holding the line that our criticism [of United Healthcare] was legitimate enough that it was equated to a threat. But again, we're not radical. What we're saying is going with what the majority of Americans think. This is an anger a lot of people have—obviously nothing to do with the violence. So no one's mad at me or anything. We're all kind of like, yeah, this makes a lot of sense.

KABAS: As the initial shock and amusement of the episode wear off, what is sticking with you the most?

MORROW: I think what's sticking with me the most is the fact that people who are critical of an industry are considered a threat in this way is truly scary—and especially as we see a new administration coming in. Right now it's kind of a funny story, like ‘haha, TMZ accused me of being the killer. I'm gonna tweet about this and make a little video’ kind of seems like a fun curiosity. But it could become way more serious in a month and a half.

KABAS: You mentioned that some people see the work of journalism as a threat. And that's scary. But isn't that also really powerful?

MORROW: It absolutely feels powerful. And it means that's when you're doing a good job. 

When I first started at More Perfect Union, I remember everyone was giddy that an executive at Kellogg’s had said something like, ‘You gotta watch out for that More Perfect Union. They're so fast and they put out some great videos. We're scared of them.’ That was a great moment. That was something that everyone was super excited about. Knowing that the people are a little scared of your reporting is extremely gratifying.

KABAS: I think that corporate America is scared physically right now because of threats of violence potentially, but it almost seems like they're maybe more scared about people finally figuring out what they're really doing.

MORROW: Yeah, I think that's definitely a big part of it. I think it's that a lot of people are all coming together and realizing that what they've had tickling the back of their brain, and thinking this whole system is evil, is actually what everyone else thinks. And I think the executives are starting to realize like, oh, we might not be able to get away with this for that much longer. But not in a violent way; in a policy way. And we have to keep that momentum. That momentum can be kept through activism, through reporting.

An executive at a health insurance company is doing his or her job well if they are keeping their margins high and returning more profit to shareholders. And a journalist is doing their job well if they're pointing out the problems with keeping margins high in something as important as healthcare.

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