Washington Post reviews Taylor Lorenz's 'war criminal' jab at Biden: NPR

Washington Post senior editors are reviewing the private social media history of a prominent tech columnist who appears to have labeled President Biden a “war criminal” in a photo.

The publicationTaylor Lorenz attended a White House event for digital influencers on Wednesday. In the photo he shared with a circle of friends on Instagram, Biden appears over his shoulder; the damning legend rests just below it, accompanied by a ruined text face.

After Jon Levine of the New York Post – a frequent critic of hers – revealed the caption of the Instagram photo in a tweet yesterday, to which Lorenz replied: “Y'all are going to fall in love with any silly edit anyone makes.”

A fact check attached to Levine's tweet cited his apparent denial. (The context note on the tweet reads, “Taylor Lorenz says this is a digital manipulation that added a fake caption.”) Lorenz told her editors that someone else had added the caption to the photo.

NPR has obtained a screenshot of Lorenz's actual post, which contained that caption. It wasn't shared with his wider Instagram audience of 143,000 followers.

Four people with direct knowledge of the private Instagram story confirmed its authenticity to NPR. They spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity because of the professional sensitivity of the situation for Lorenz.

“Our executive editor and senior editors take the alleged violations of our standards seriously,” a newspaper spokesperson told NPR. “We are aware of the alleged post and are investigating it.” Lorenz declined to comment.

Lorenz removes the photo from her private chat

About an hour after originally circulating it, Lorenz removed the image with the caption “war criminal” from his private Instagram chat and publicly posted the same image on social media, this time without any caption.

Some pro-Palestinian protesters have tried to label Biden a “war criminal” over the deaths in Gaza caused by Israel, a US ally. The context of Lorenz's publication, however, is not entirely clear; the phrasing and images, including a frowny face made with colons and open parentheses 🙁 — closely follow an online meme.

Lorenz has since told associates that a close friend took a posted photo of her and superimposed the caption on it, as a joke, and shared it with the group on the private Instagram post.

Lorenz has not spoken otherwise about the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Lorenz covers digital culture for al publication and she herself is fully immersed in him. It has won massive praise, appearing on “best of” lists. his book Extremely online it was a national bestseller last year.

He previously wrote for the Daily Beast, Business Insider, the Atlantic magazine and then The New York Times.

Controversy in real life and online

Lorenz has also caused controversy, online, in the press and in real life.

During the height of the pandemic, and since its ebb, he has inspired derision from conservatives for his insistence about wearing masks, even outdoors. She has cited autoimmune issues as the reason.

When leaving the time two years ago, Lorenz he said Vanity Fair who had expected the paper to “evolve in its own way” in terms of digital culture and social media.

time Editor AG Sulzberger and Executive Editor Joseph Kahn have asked to emphasize journalistic independence and have asked the staff to avoid online posts with ideological leanings or snark.

Although Lorenz writes many news articles, the publication has appointed her a columnist, giving her more room for maneuver in the press and the web.

However, the publication has a tradition of monitoring the statements of its journalists on public social networks. In 2022, the publication fired reporter Felicia Sonmez for insubordination for her tweets about the treatment of female reporters and suspended reporter Dave Weigel for airing a joke deemed sexist. He left the paper a few months later.