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alpha_squared | 5 months ago

From what I'm gathering, the quote she attributes to Kirk appears to not be a statement he made. I'm not able to find a source for that quote anywhere, but I'm also not about to go watch/listen to everything Kirk ever said in case it was never transcribed anywhere. If it is true that Kirk never said that, I would say that definitely compromises the trust in her as a journalist.

And I'm saying this as someone who is on the "political left" by US standards, though more centrist by broader western standards.

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yakz|5 months ago

It's not an exact quote, but it was on The Charlie Kirk Show, on July 13th 2023. The video is still available, it's around 53:45 in.

muddi900|5 months ago

There is nothing uncharacteristic about statement. This is something similar he said about black people.

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1ZPr6KwnzA/

The benefit of the doubt should go to the author. Why are we pretending that he was not this?

orionsbelt|5 months ago

His point is not that black people are less capable but that DEI policies causing looser standards causes people to question whether a particular black person they encounter in a role is sufficiently qualified given those well known looser standards, and that this is bad for everyone, black people included. You can argue he’s still wrong, but it’s quite clear from the various clips that this is what he is arguing. In another clip, for example, he cited United’s goal of having 50% of pilots being of color or women, as compared to 13% of the population being black and women having less of an interest in careers like being a pilot; ie he has no prejudice against black peoples capabilities but has an issue with lowering hiring standards for any group of people.

IAmBroom|5 months ago

Why should any side get the benefit of the doubt?

hackeraccount|5 months ago

Embarrassingly, I've read the details on the quote. The short version is that Kirk said something about several individuals which was changed in the "quote" to be about a group.

The paraphrase would be if I said, my co-works Bob and John were congenital idiots and I was quoted as saying "All Unix Administrators are congenital idiots"

Should she get fired for that kind of thing? Easily yes if she did it in a work product.

If she did it for something outside of work? I have no idea. Probably not but nominally she was doing straight news for the Washington Post. The deeper problem is the no one goes into Journalism to do straight news reporting but everyone at least starts off doing that and for most that's all they ever do - but everyone wants the dream; getting paid to tell other people what they think is right and wrong with the world. The only way to get that dream job is to start off doing it for free but it's not hard to see how that might conflict with your day job if your day job is straight news reporting.