UPDATE: June 1 ― MSNBC and Joy Reid responded Friday to the latest controversy surrounding her now-defunct blog, The Reid Report.
In statements to HuffPost, the cable news network and the host of MSNBC’s “AM Joy” addressed two blog posts she wrote in 2006 and 2007, which BuzzFeed resurfaced this week.
“While I published my blog, starting in 2005, I wrote thousands of posts in real time on the issues of the day,” Reid said. “There are things I deeply regret and am embarrassed by, things I would have said differently and issues where my position has changed. Today I’m sincerely apologizing again.”
MSNBC had declined for weeks to publicly comment about dozens of anti-LGBTQ blog posts that a Twitter user resurfaced in April, or on Reid’s dubious claim that the posts on The Reid Report were the result of a cyberattack.
The network addressed the two newly surfaced posts in a statement Friday, though remained silent on Reid’s hacking claims.
“Some of the things written by Joy on her old blog are obviously hateful and hurtful,” according to the statement. “They are not reflective of the colleague and friend we have known at MSNBC for the past seven years. Joy has apologized publicly and privately and said she has grown and evolved in the many years since, and we know this to be true.”
A representative for MSNBC declined to comment further when asked about Reid’s hacking claims.
PREVIOUSLY:
MSNBC’s Joy Reid and her now-defunct blog, The Reid Report, are making headlines again this week after BuzzFeed reported on two controversial posts she apparently wrote in 2006 and 2007.
The posts, which feature a 9/11 conspiracy theory and a manipulated image of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) as a mass shooter, were resurrected by BuzzFeed roughly a month after Reid dubiously claimed her old blog had been hacked to include homophobic content written under her name.
MSNBC has yet to acknowledge the latest controversy surrounding the host of their weekend show “AM Joy,” and Reid has been noticeably silent about BuzzFeed’s reports on social media.
Representatives from MSNBC did not respond to HuffPost’s multiple requests for comment, nor did Reid’s attorney. A cybersecurity expert Reid hired to investigate the alleged hacking of her old blog declined to comment.
Reid came under fire last month after a Twitter user published a trove of screenshots allegedly of dozens of anti-LGBTQ blog posts written by Reid from 2005 to 2009. Some of the most damning posts claimed “most straight people cringe at the sight of two men kissing” and that “adult gay men tend to be attracted to very young, post-pubescent types.”
Despite apologizing in December for writing anti-gay posts about a Florida lawmaker several years ago, Reid vehemently denied writing the comments featured in the April batch of screenshots.
Reid claimed she had been the subject of a cyberattack and that a cybersecurity expert had identified “unauthorized activity” on the blog.
“Now that the site has been compromised I can state unequivocally that it does not represent the original entries,” Reid said in a statement at the time. An attorney for Reid claimed the FBI was investigating the alleged hacking.
Several news outlets, including HuffPost, determined Reid’s hacking claims fell apart under scrutiny. She returned to “AM Joy” several days after the screenshots were published, where she said that she didn’t “believe” she had written the posts but that she couldn’t actually prove her blog was hacked.
“I can only say that the person I am now is not the person I was then,” Reid said after apologizing for having made some homophobic comments in the past. “I like to think I’ve gotten better as a person over time ― that I’m still growing.”
Many of Reid supporters, including several fellow MSNBC hosts, applauded her apology ― and ignored her seemingly contradictory claims about being hacked.
MSNBC never released an official statement in support of Reid’s hacking claims, and representatives have since directed all questions related to the hacking investigation to Reid’s attorney.
Backlash over Reid’s hacking claims and MSNBC’s public indifference over the matter has simmered in the weeks since the screenshots first resurfaced. But BuzzFeed reports this week have put the controversy back into the spotlight.
On Wednesday, BuzzFeed published a report about a March 2006 blog post that appeared to be written by Reid in which the left-leaning political analyst promotes a 9/11 conspiracy theory that questioned the U.S. government’s account of the attack.
“The fundamental question is: do you believe the official story of 9/11?” Reid allegedly wrote in the post, which discussed “Loose Change 9/11,” a 2005 film peddling widely debunked theories about the attack.
“If you do, great,” the post continued. “If you don’t, then everything that happened after that is called into serious question. Even if you’re agnostic, or you tend to believe that al-Qaida attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon and that the government had no warning such a thing could happen, it’s worth taking a second look.”
The outlet’s second story this week about Reid’s old blog, published Thursday, contained screenshots of an alleged post from October 2007 featuring a Photoshopped image of McCain as the Virginia Tech mass shooter.
It’s unclear whether Reid believes she wrote these two posts or contends they are part of the alleged cyberattack against her blog.