Making mistakes occurs in life and at work; it just happens. How you respond to these trip-ups is the real question. We know that the liberal media doesn't respond well when called out for their nonsense. They were wrong about the Russian collusion myth. Everyone should have been fired, but that's never going to happen. The political class and their media allies have removed accountability from their vocabulary. And now, we have this trainwreck piece from The Washington Post about the recent defamation trial involving Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. Depp won the case. Heard owes him $13-15 million for a 2018 op-ed where she made allegations that a jury found to be defamatory and false. Feminists had a meltdown. It was a day that ended in "y."
What's sad about this piece is that this shipwreck was avoidable. All Taylor Lorenz had to do was reach out for comment and say that the person who was contacted did not reply in time for publication. You can always circle back and update if they do reply. You cannot do the latter when you never reached out to the people in question in the first place. But apparently, on Earth 2, this happened. The original piece stated that Legal Bytes host Alyte Mazeika and "ThatUmbrellaGuy" were contacted but never responded. Well, that was a lie (via Fox News):
Included in the paragraph was a parenthetical statement reading, "Mazeika and ThatUmbrellaGuy did not respond to requests for comment."
Both Mazeika and ThatUmbrellaGuy refuted the statement, saying Lorenz never reached out to them prior to publication of her story.
"Um. This says I didn't respond to requests to comment? I know I've gotten a lot of emails over the past two months, but I've just double checked for your name, @TaylorLorenz, and I see no email from you," Mazeika called out the Washington Post columnist. "Also, I didn't suddenly pivot. I started covering this before trial began."
Mazeika accused Lorenz of mischaracterizing Business Insider's coverage of her, which she too thought was "unfair." She later provided an update claiming Lorenz reached out to her for comment "after the piece was already published and I had to call it out."
[…]
ThatUmbrellaGuy similarly called out the Post's article.
"The Washington Post LIED and DID NOT contact me before including me in their story on Johnny Depp, despite reporting they did so," the YouTuber tweeted, sharing time stamps of his tweet calling out the article and Lorenz's email to him sent minutes later.
He later continued, "The Washington Post also FLAGRANTLY misrepresented my earnings report and needs to correct it. Social Blade says I made between $4.9k and $79.1k. They ADDED TO the highest estimate, overreporting for dramatic effect."
Democracy dies in Taylor Lorenz lying and WaPo stealth editing until people realize so they have to issue a correction on the lies and the stealth edits https://t.co/NEId2hAgNA
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) June 4, 2022
What?! @washingtonpost I will say this AGAIN.
— Legal Bytes ???? (@legalbytesmedia) June 4, 2022
I was not reached out to by @TaylorLorenz for comment until after my tweet below. She reached out to me by IG DM AFTER she did on Twitter. Both DMs were sent to me AFTER I called her out here.
Please stop lying and take the L. https://t.co/5mylhJTU9f pic.twitter.com/ZfS7BUCeDF
@washingtonpost: “Democracy dies in darkness.”
— Legal Bytes ???? (@legalbytesmedia) June 4, 2022
Also WaPo: “We’re going to keep the facts in the dark so we can continue our self-serving narrative that we’re more virtuous than independent content creators.”
Our friends at Twitchy surveyed the wreckage. Libs of TikTok, who was doxxed by the publication for being too good at shredding liberal narratives, also documented the fallout. Even the correction was incorrect, which Mazeika also pointed out on Twitter. On a side note, the story itself was about how social media influencers who aren't gung-ho about breaking news might be shifting their platforms to cover these topics due to the traffic spike they got from the Depp-Heard trial.