Just to follow up on a story we told you about earlier today, the New York Times put out a statement that they did not fire editor Lauren Wolfe over her “chills” tweet watching Joe Biden arrive in D.C. for the inauguration:
NYT statement on the chills tweet: “There’s a lot of inaccurate information circulating on Twitter. For privacy reasons we don’t get into the details of personnel matters but we can say that we didn’t end someone’s employment over a single tweet..We don’t plan to comment further”
— Joe Pompeo (@joepompeo) January 24, 2021
Let’s just say this statement isn’t going over very well either:
So @nytimes impugns @Wolfe321 and implies other wrongdoing on her part in a statement announcing they would not comment on a personnel matter in order to protect privacy?
Taking a last shot and then scuttling away is pretty skeezy. https://t.co/p7n5VboKm5
— Greg Pinelo (@gregpinelo) January 24, 2021
But, “legally speaking” the New York Times “would be putting itself in jeopardy if it released a false statment to this effect”:
Not dispositive but legally speaking NYT would be putting itself in jeopardy if it released a false statement to this effect. Recall that during the David Shor situation, Civis Analytics withdrew its initial claim to Yascha Mounk that it wouldn't fire someone for tweeting a paper https://t.co/SKkalVAerJ
— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) January 24, 2021
So, do you believe the Times?
I… believe them? https://t.co/lRBv7la8KS
— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) January 24, 2021
TBH, firing Wolfe over the tweet never made sense:
1) That's the thing about "cancel culture," it won't only happen to people you don't like.
2) I can not find a single person calling for Lauren Wolfe to be fired from the NYT. People can pretend a conservative mob came for her but I literally can't find it.— Karol Markowicz (@karol) January 24, 2021
Sure, there was some light mocking over it but no real outrage or “conservative mob”:
Did the NYT really cave to a conservative mob, never mind a mob that left no receipts that it ever existed outside of mocking the least problematic tweets in history with replies and quote tweets? Something isn't adding up with this story.
— Blame Big Government (@BlameBigGovt) January 24, 2021
But something tells us we’ll hear more about this in the coming days:
We don’t comment on personnel matters except, yes, we will comment on personnel matters to provide contentless innuendo and depart from the room with a flourish of our cape. https://t.co/4SYCFnzgRr
— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) January 24, 2021
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