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Comment by docdeek | Hacker News Reader

The FAMA story links to examples, though not all of the links remain live.

One of the first was from a police officer who had posted on social media, "If he can scream he can breath, something else was going on. I’ve been pepper sprayed with CS gas and it messes with your breathing but you can definitely still breath.”

Another was a sports broadcaster who was forced out/resigned after tweeting: "Longtime Sacramento Kings TV broadcaster Grant Napear resigned Tuesday after he tweeted "ALL LIVES MATTER" when asked by DeMarcus Cousins for his opinion on the Black Lives Matter movement.”

Some of the links, and therefore the comments, are not accessible from Europe, but the actual comments (or stories including the comments) are all there.

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And a black writer (the last black colomnist at WaPo) has been purged for literally quoting Kirk.

https://karenattiah.substack.com/p/the-washington-post-fired...

But again, my point isn't to dish anecdotes. If we want to set a standard, norms, we have to get more than one data point.

> for literally quoting Kirk

It wasn't literal and it wasn't quoting. Kirk named 4 people in his actual quote, she maliciously changed it to make it appear he said it was about all women of a certain race, and put it in quotes so that people think she was quoting verbatim.

"If we would have said that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racists. Now they’re coming out and they’re saying it for us … You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously."

– The Charlie Kirk Show, 13 July 2023

She turned it into this, while putting quotes around it.

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!db2o!,f_auto,q_auto:...

Yes, I know, I can read the very link I shared.

Do you seriously think Kirk is only accusing the "four people" - four successful black women - of "steal[ing] a white person's slot" and just these four? Only these four? That this is the message he is sending?

The point is that it in no way justifies making up quotes and adding his name to them as if he literally said something else verbatim, especially as someone working for a newspaper.

She could've just added what she thought he actually meant after not butchering what he said on purpose.

Her edit is wrong, and probably deliberate, for that she will be criticized. But Kirk did write and say some truly heinous things. That much is something we all know.

He accused four successful black women of "steal[ing] a white person's slot", and guys here are desperately trying to pretend it only applies to these four persons.

Pathetic.

Again, you're putting words in our mouths just like she did to Kirk.

You should never be attributing verbatim quotes to someone while signing their name to it, especially as a journalist, it's simply wrong and unacceptable.

The reader can decide for themselves what Kirk actually meant after reading his actual original quote with you or her deciding for all of us.

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