These tweets are from Tuesday night, but they’re important. They’re important because, as Twitchy reported, Taylor Lorenz included in her hit piece on the woman behind Libs of Tik Tok a link to her real estate license, which included her address and other personal information. But when the Washington Post’s senior managing editor released a statement defending Lorenz’s reporting, she declared that “we did not publish or link to any details about her personal life.” That’s a flat-out lie. As Jerry Dunleavy and a few others noted, the Post stealth-edited the piece to remove the link to the real estate license without an explanation or editor’s note.
Fox News media reporter Joseph Wulfsohn reached out to the Post to get some clarification on that claim.
NEW: I reached out to The Washington Post on its statement defending Taylor Lorenz's report doxxing @libsoftiktok, which claimed, "We did not publish or link to any details about her personal life." (Thread) https://t.co/HUZiSw5j2t
— Joseph A. Wulfsohn (@JosephWulfsohn) April 20, 2022
WaPo faced intense backlash for initially including a hyperlink that revealed Libs of TikTok's employer, professional info as well as an address, which has been referred to as her home address.
The hyperlink was later scrubbed from the report following backlash. 2/
— Joseph A. Wulfsohn (@JosephWulfsohn) April 20, 2022
I pressed WaPo regarding the incident and its statement.
A spokesperson insisted, "We linked to publicly available professional information."
But when asked why the link was later scrubbed, they replied, "Ultimately, we deemed it unnecessary."
— Joseph A. Wulfsohn (@JosephWulfsohn) April 20, 2022
Isn’t the editor’s job to make sure things that are unnecessary aren’t included in the published piece? You post a link, and then remove it because you deemed it unnecessary after it was published? That’s not how this works.
WaPo really thinks they can get away with changing their story from "We did not publish or link to any details about @libsoftiktok ‘s personal life" to "We linked to publicly available professional information" 🤦♂️
— RuleOrRuin (@RuleRuin) April 20, 2022
No one will hold them accountable so they can do more or less whatever they want.
— carl..von..claws (@carl_clawso) April 20, 2022
In other words, their legal team said to scrub the post lest we get sued.
— WhatsNewsHere 🇺🇸 (@WhatsNewsHere) April 20, 2022
And why no editor's note? Was that also ultimately deemed unnecessary?
— Bill D'Agostino (@Banned_Bill) April 20, 2022
They linked to her "business" address, and then left out the fact that it was also her personal home address, which Taylor Lorenz was well aware of.
— » J H « (@FuarFearg) April 20, 2022
This reminds me of how in 2019 the Post reported, falsely, that I had written an article titled, "Are Women Destroying Academia? Probably." Later that day, they fixed the article, quietly, no doubt after readers told them it was wrong.
— Professor Eric Rasmusen (@erasmuse) April 20, 2022
And with no apology either, I bet. @washingtonpost , responsible adults admit when they've done wrong and apologize. You should get going on that sooner, rather than later… you've got quite a backlog.
— Suzanne (@catholicmom2) April 20, 2022
So they lied.
— Libs Of TikTok Hurt My Feelings (@MAGASoGood) April 20, 2022
They absolutely did.
Related:
WaPo’s senior managing editor says the paper did not link to any details about Libs of Tik Tok’s personal life https://t.co/XriJJbGpE6
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) April 19, 2022