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The Associated Press responded after firing an “anti-Israel activist” reporter last week, saying that reporters could not openly take sides on issues, which would take away from the outlet’s ability to report based on “fairness and credibility,” the Daily Wire reported.
The AP fired Emily Wilder last week after her old social media posts from 1997-2000 went viral. In those posts, she made controversial remarks about a prominent Jew and Israel. AP claims Wilder violated the company’s social media policy for employees, even though the woman was not employed by AP at the time the posts were made.
Wilder responded to the termination with this comment:
When I asked my managers which exact tweets were in violation of policy or how, they refused to tell me. In the end, rather than take whatever misstep I made as a teaching opportunity – as is the point of the news associate program – it appears they took it as an opportunity to make me a scapegoat.
This is heartbreaking as a young journalist so hungry to learn from the fearless investigative reporting of AP journalists – and do that reporting myself.
And it’s enraging as a Jewish person – who grew up in a Jewish community, attended Orthodox schooling and devoted my college years to studying Palestine and Israel – that I could be defamed as anti-Semitic and thrown under the bus in the process.
The Associated Press certainly has a right to hire anyone they wish to work for the company and to set policies governing their online activity at work or, perhaps, even when employed by the company. However, Wilder was a college student when the posts were made, not an employee.
The situation also raises an interesting question. If these posts were so offensive, why didn’t the master investigative journalists at The AP uncover them during the hiring process?
Wilder is just the latest victim of cancel culture that seeks to hold people responsible for comments made years earlier, many times when the person was in high school or college.
The full story can be found at the Daily Wire.
