 So, the Associated Press admits fault in firing of journalists targeted by conservatives. So you know how we often hear about the sensorious left who's always cancelling people? Well, in this instance, conservatives got an AP journalist fired. They're the ones doing the cancelling. And you know, if you've been following this story for a while, you know that this isn't the first time. It's happened all the time. I mean, it was Mike Cernovich who got Sam Cedar fired temporarily from MSNBC. They do this all the time, but yet they still maintain that it's the left who's overly sensorious, who's cancelling people. So let's read the story. This is an update. I hope that they have some background information here. But the Associated Press admitted to making mistakes over its firing of reporter Emily Wilder, who was targeted by conservatives for her college activism. The news outlet held a town hall on Wednesday, according to the Washington Post, which obtained an audio recording of the meeting. Brian Caraviano, managing editor of the AP, remarked that the mistakes were mistakes of process and not of outcome. That doesn't really seem like they're admitting culpability here. So they admit fault. But yet they're saying, oh, well, we agree that the firing was just, but it's just that the process itself, that's where we made the mistakes. That seems a bit odd to me. Caraviano said Wilder was given special training for social media after the company deemed past tweets borderline inappropriate. Still he said, we do need to be honest with ourselves and we need to admit that we've made some mistakes in the past week. Oh, well, I mean, how introspective of him to say this. The town hall came one week after Wilder was fired from the AP amid conservative backlash to her activism for Palestinian causes. On May 17, the Stanford College Republicans posted tweets detailing her activism while she was a student at Stanford University two years ago. She was fired on May 19. The AP originally declined to comment on the firing, but the news service later said Wilder was let go for tweets she made while on the job, not for her college activism. However, Wilder later issued a statement on Twitter saying, the AP never told her which tweets violated policies. She further suggested that the AP caved to pressure from the right to fire her, and that seems to be the case. More than 100 AP staffers signed an open letter on Monday demanding to know why she was fired. The staffers also voiced concerns that the news outlet service would not support them if they were targeted with a smear attack. As journalists who cover contentious subjects, we are often the target of people unhappy with scrutiny, the reporters wrote. What happens when they orchestrate a smear campaign targeting another one of us? Interest groups are celebrating their victory and turning their sights on more AP journalists. And this is exactly correct. During the town hall, executives addressed the concerns of the staffers, and according to the post, Deputy Managing Editor Amanda Barrett said, we want to acknowledge that we made missteps in handling this crisis. Please know the AP will protect you. We will have your back when you face threats online. So this doesn't necessarily seem like they've done that much soul searching. They're saying, yeah, I mean it's still justified that she was fired, but we were right to fire her. I mean, this is just one person who they fired, but if I'm an AP reporter, I'm going to think, oh, well, the minute I write an article that's controversial that conservatives don't like, all they have to do is find some old tweet and then I'm going to be fired and the AP is not going to protect me. So Ken Klupenstein of the Intercept writes, the Associated Press sent a memo to the news agency's editorial staff this weekend about its controversial decision to fire a young staff reporter, Emily Wilder, following a conservative campaign to have her removed over her college activism regarding Israel Palestine. The memo obtained by the Intercept assured staffers that we hear you and you will have a voice, then goes on to stand by the decision. I mean, this is obviously inherently contradictory. We did not make it lightly. The memo notes signed by 10 senior executives, one signature is conspicuously absent AP's executive director, Sally Busby. On Monday, Busby insisted to NPR that she had no involvement in the decision saying that she had already handed over day to day operations after accepting a new job at the Washington Post. Busby's first day as the Post's executive editor will be June 1st. Two AP staffers who spoke to the Intercept on the condition of anonymity to avoid professional reprisal said that Busby's distancing from the issue reflects how controversial the firing is, both within the news agency and beyond. Wilder, a 22-year-old who graduated from Stanford University last year, joined AP as a news associate earlier this month. Last week, she became the target of Stanford College Republicans who deemed her an anti-Israel agitator. In a Twitter thread pointing to her membership in student organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, as well as a Facebook post mocking Sheldon Adelson, the late Republican billionaire and ardent defender of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. So this is the controversy here. She was in pro-Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace in college, and she made fun of a billionaire oligarch. That's the controversy. That's why they fired her. That's embarrassing. The tweets were later amplified by right-wing news outlets, and even Republican Senator Tom Cotton, the campaign targeting Wilder, came after she tweeted criticism of news coverage of Israel's occupation of Palestine. And she's right to criticize them for that. Now, Tom Cotton, he was just on Fox News, like a month or so ago, talking about how terrible cancel culture is, and here he is amplifying this cancel culture of someone who he doesn't like, who dared to have an opinion. They're just so blatantly hypocritical. And AP's office in Gaza was bombed. And even the most minimal amount of advocacy for Palestinian human rights, AP, shoots it down. Yeah, artillery is absolutely correct. Cancel culture for me, but not for thee. That's exactly it. I mean, this dude right here, Senator Tom Cotton, who's a fascist, by the way, he's been leading the cause against cancel culture, and all of a sudden, here he is joining in to cancel a journalist. An AP editor assured Wilder that she would not be fired for her old posts on social media. Wilder has said then she was fired on Thursday for violating the news agency's social media policy, citing a company policy of not commenting on personal matters. So really what she was fired for was criticizing the news coverage of Israel's occupation of Palestine. You know what we call that? We call that objectivity because the news coverage was objectively terrible. I will say as someone who's followed this issue now for more than 10 years, I think that this latest round of coverage was probably better. Like we saw more objective takes. John Oliver did a great segment. Allieville, she of MSNBC has been phenomenal on this issue. But I mean, she literally just tweeted that the coverage is biased, and they fired her for that. In fact, I'm not even going to buy that. They're using this as a justification. And you know, they know that firing her for being in a club, Jewish voice for peace, and students for justice in Palestine, that's not really a good look. So they made an excuse up, and they fired her because of this. That's most likely what happened. So this afternoon, the union representing Washington Post reporters tweeted solidarity with the staff of the AP and Emily Wilder. We hope management provides swift answers on her termination and clarifies the newsroom social media practices. This is the first tweet the Washington Post guild has issued since welcoming Busby's hiring on May 11th. So I think that the details of the story speak for itself. This is a pretty clear cut case, in my opinion, of the right after denouncing cancel culture for months, successfully canceling someone else. They did it to Sam Cedar, and now they did it to Emily Wilder because she was critical of the coverage of Israel-Palestine. It's just they should be embarrassed, but they're not. So I mean, needless to say, I think that the AP's credibility should definitely take a hit after this. This is inexcusable. You're a journalist outlet, and you expect the people who work for you to just be robots. Is that really the expectation? I don't understand what they want from them. You're going to have people who work for you with political opinions, and most of the time, the folks who get hired at these mainstream news outlets, they have the wrong opinion that I disagree with. But they're not robots. What I care about is objectivity in their journalism. So don't be neutral. Don't both sides it when you're covering stories, but be objective and present us with the actual facts and data. That's what we need. But I mean, she pointed out, not in an article, but on her free time, that Israel's occupation has been covered in a biased way, and she got fired for that. It's gross.