Thread by @DrewHolden360

🧵Thread🧵

It’s been a day of awful takes from the media about the resignation of former president Claudine Gay from Harvard. @FreeBeacon

I’d like to show you some of the worst. Follow along ⤵️
freebeacon.com/media/harvards…

Before we dive in, quick backstory. Gay resigned in the wake of allegations of plagiarism that @FreeBeacon (particularly @aaronsibarium) has reported on extensively. You can read the ones that immediately preceded her resignation here: freebeacon.com/campus/harvard…

A number of outlets wanted to blame anything but Gay for her own academic fraud.

@nytimes blamed “a proxy fight over campus politics” for her resignation.

It isn’t clear how this proxy fight could have caused her to commit plagiarism.

@politico did the same, blaming conservatives for doing journalism about a powerful person who had committed fraud.

And @CNN’s @MattEganCNN included perhaps the most head spinning word salad to explain how it wasn’t actually plagiarism. (H/t @SteveGuest )

That Gay could have been the victim of her own bad behavior wasn’t something some folks in the media could accept.

Instead, many blamed racism. Here’s @ibramxk, who perhaps thinks that racism did the plagiarizing.

You’ll never guess what @MSNBC’s @TheRevAl blamed it on.

And I’m sure you’ll be equally surprised to hear that @nhannahjones did the same thing.

Her coworker @MaraGay did the same thing in this mind melting interview. (H/t @tomselliott)

@NBCNews convened a panel to figure out if racism was the culprit and — you’ll never believe this — @SymoneDSanders said that it was.

Perhaps the best take, by my lights, was @AP, who is outraged that conservatives appear to have discovered the new “weapon” of journalism.

Luckily, AP and the rest of the gang have largely abandoned that mantle.

And as @peterjhasson and others have pointed out @AP took some creative liberties with their history, too.

More examples in the piece. The media didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory today. Link again is here: freebeacon.com/media/harvards…

And fear not. Gay still has a job…teaching at Harvard.

Media reaction summed up:

They haven’t stopped. Was waiting on something ridiculous from @washingtonpost and they didn’t disappoint.

No mention in the tweet about what actually caused Gay to resign: her penchant for plagiarizing

@washingtonpost One thing that I think this coverage makes clear: the mainstream media views themselves as in a pitched battle to defend not just Gay but any other powerful person who’s wrongdoing was exposed by conservatives.

That’s a horrific miscarriage of journalism.