Joy Reid claims new anti-LGBTQ blog posts were created by hackers
Reid's lawyers argue they have evidence of hacking, but Internet Archive disagrees
MSNBC host Joy Reid said that hackers are responsible for a new batch of anti-LGBTQ blog posts circulating on social media this week.
In December, Reid apologized for a series of blog posts disparaging Congressman Charlie Crist’s sexuality, which she wrote between 2007 and 2009, calling him “Miss Charlie” and saying his marriage with a woman was a political stunt.
This week The New York Times said that MSNBC provided documents showing that lawyers representing Reid reported the alleged hacking to Google and Internet Archive in December, saying that both the old posts and these new posts circulating were not created by Reid.
“In December I learned that an unknown, external party accessed and manipulated material from my now-defunct blog, The Reid Report, to include offensive and hateful references that are fabricated and run counter to my personal beliefs and ideology,” the statement said, adding, “Now that the site has been compromised I can state unequivocally that it does not represent the original entries.”
Jonathan Nichols, an independent cybersecurity consultant for MSNBC, elaborated on Reid’s claim, saying that the blog posts included “suspicious formatting and time stamps” and “text and visual stylings” that differed from other entries of the blog.
Questions are still being raised though, as the Internet Archive, a nonprofit that hosts her archived site, said in a statement that it has no record or evidence of tampering with their Wayback Machine.
The site added that it declined a request made by Reid’s lawyers to remove the website entirely, saying that Reid’s career and the newsworthiness of the articles did not warrant deletion.
This newest batch of posts allegedly made by Reid included oppositions to gay marriage, a disgust for homosexuality and that gay men were preying on “impressionable teens.”
“Most straight people cringe at the sight of two men kissing,” one post said. It concluded: “The nature of political correctness is that gay people are allowed to say straight sex is gross but the reverse is considered to be patently homophobic.”
Another post describes Rachel Maddow, who has the most watched show on MSNBC, as “the left-most end of the political spectrum.” Neither Maddow or Reid was a part of the network when Reid’s blog would have been active.
PFLAG announced on Tuesday that they would be retracting an award that was going to be given to Reid this spring due to the controversy.
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