BuzzFeed quietly removes defamatory claims about JK Rowling
Larry Fitzmaurice's original BuzzFeed piece accused JK Rowlling of having 'hateful' and 'dangerous' beliefs.
I recently wrote about a Buzzfeed article that described JK Rowling as ‘anti-trans’ with ‘hateful’ and ‘dangerous’ beliefs.
When I challenged the writer responsible to point me to where I could find these ‘dangerous, hateful anti-trans beliefs’, they blocked me on Twitter.
However, since that fruitless attempt to hold them to basic journalistic standards, it now appears some of the defamatory claims in question have been quietly edited out of the offending article.
You can see the new paragraph below (left) as it compares to the original claims (right).
This edit was made without a single acknowledgement or retraction of the initial claims. So, do BuzzFeed no longer believe these claims are true then? If they believe them to be true, why edit them out? And if they do not believe these claims to be true, why not include a public retraction—which is standard for any significant inaccuracy, let alone one of this magnitude.
It is deeply irresponsible to spread such inflammatory falsehoods to millions of people then quietly edit them out without so much as a basic apology or note of correction. Also, I’m amazed that they think they are on safe ground just by limiting the defamation to ‘anti-trans’.
This isn’t merely a trivial difference of opinion between Rowling and BuzzFeed. This is a huge, corporate entity spreading the lie that JK Rowling has espoused ‘dangerous’ and ‘hateful’ beliefs about a specific minority. And they have spread this lie to millions of people. A lie that increases the security concerns of people like Rowling and poisons the discussion for anyone else that also wishes to engage with the issue in good faith.
I’ve noticed another lie about Rowling blocking horror writer Stephen King on Twitter remains in the article however. In reality, JK Rowling is still clearly following the Twitter account of Stephen King. It is not possible to follow an account on Twitter that you have blocked:
This took me a whole 40 seconds to confirm. And Stephen King has publicly promoted Rowling’s latest book as recently as June 2022.
I remain utterly amazed that people will publish demonstrable falsehoods about real people and spread them to an audience of millions without doing the bare minimum of due diligence. These are the mud-slinging tactics of people that enter the battle of ideas and discover they are unarmed.
BuzzFeed’s tagline is ‘Spreading Truth and Joy’— which turns out to be a remarkable piece of Orwellian Newspeak.
"BuzzFeed’s tagline is ‘Spreading Truth and Joy’— which turns out to be a remarkable piece of Orwellian Newspeak."
Indeed!
I notice that they have not removed the allegation of "anti-trans rhetoric". Loth though I am to give them clicks, I wondered where that link went.
To another Buzzfeed article, which demonstrates that they use "anti-trans rhetoric" as a synonym for "believes in biological sex and also supports women's rights and safeguarding children".
I posted a link to this article on twitter and also I am including it in my newsletter for next Monday. I respect the effort put into researching and documenting here. I also would like to suggest that you have a plan to be able to report in the future who colluded with trans extremism.