Earlier today I wrote about the feminist backlash to the fact that Johnny Depp won his defamation suit against Amber Heard. One of the articles I highlighted was an analysis piece written by Taylor Lorenz for the Washington Post in which she argued that the social media content creators were cashing in on the popularity of the trial. That article has since come under fire by at least two people mentioned in it.

Her article cites two YouTube personalities, “LegalBytes” host Alyte Mazeika and an anonymous user named ThatUmbrellaGuy. Lorenz alleged that according to Business Insider, Mazeika “earned $5,000 in one week by pivoting the content on her YouTube channel to nonstop trial coverage and analysis.” She also claimed that ThatUmbrellaGuy “earned up to $80,000 last month, according to an estimate by social analytics firm Social Blade.”

Included in the paragraph was a parenthetical statement reading, “Mazeika and ThatUmbrellaGuy did not respond to requests for comment.”

Both Mazeika and ThatUmbrellaGuy refuted the statement, saying Lorenz never reached out to them prior to publication of her story.

Alyte Mazeika tweeted about the story, pointing out that she was never contacted by Lorenz, at least not until after the story was published.

Um. This says I didn't respond to requests to comment? I know I've gotten a lot of emails over the past two months, but I've just double checked for your name, @TaylorLorenz, and I see no email from you.

Also, I didn't suddenly pivot. I started covering this before trial began. https://t.co/7qHTrOsfHQ pic.twitter.com/yJzzqS8ggS

— Legal Bytes 🍽💙 (@legalbytesmedia) June 3, 2022

UPDATE:

I have now been (for the first time) reached out to for comment… After the piece was already published and I had to call it out.

This is so dumb.

— Legal Bytes 🍽💙 (@legalbytesmedia) June 3, 2022

ThatUmbrellaGuy, the other person mentioned in the story, also never heard from Lorenz prior to publication but she contacted him after the fact as well.

Looks like ThatUmbrellaGuy made The Washington Post, because "dedicated pro-Depp content."

Nice how they speculate at what I made 1 month, btw, but omit YEARS of coverage.

I'd like to see proof that Washington Post reached out to me, bc I got no email or Twitter DMs. pic.twitter.com/RhO2lMGPan

— ThatUmbrellaGuy (@ThatUmbrella) June 3, 2022

Lol SAME. I double-checked in case there was something I missed in the torrent of emails I've been getting, and yeah, no. No email.

— Legal Bytes 🍽💙 (@legalbytesmedia) June 3, 2022

The Washington Post LIED and DID NOT contact me before including me in their story on Johnny Depp, despite reporting they did so.

I noted this on Twitter today at 8:31p.

At 9:44p they decided to contact me, AFTER I noted this publicly. ( pic.twitter.com/gkGt0WuMKZ

— ThatUmbrellaGuy (@ThatUmbrella) June 3, 2022

He clarified today that in addition to never contacting him, Lorenz also misrepresented his earnings.

Social Blade notes a low of 4.7k to 79.1k; not only did she omit the low end, she ADDED to the highest. This from someone claiming to be better than Youtubers. If she wanted a real story, she'd ask domestic abuse survivors why they back Johnny Depp. But hey. MONEY right?" Fin

— ThatUmbrellaGuy (@ThatUmbrella) June 3, 2022

The story was first stealth-edited, removing the claim that the two content creators had not responded to requests for comment.

Alyte Mazeika appeared on a YouTube show today and said Lorenz had apologized for that claim and said it had been added by someone else, presumably an editor. Lorenz claimed she asked them to remove it. Mazeika seems to take Lorenz at her word but I find this explanation odd. Claiming that people were contacted for comment is a pretty specific thing to say. Would an editor really add that without hearing from the reporter that such an attempt was made? Why did this editor add it if Lorenz never said it?

But apology aside, Mazeika clearly wasn’t happy with the fact that Lorenz never mentioned she was an attorney who had planned to cover the Depp trial long before it became a media spectacle. She was just lumped in as yet another content creator chasing clout and cash. In any case, the Post has added a correction to the article.

A previous version of this story inaccurately attributed to Adam Waldman a quote describing how he contacted some Internet influencers. That quote has been removed. The story has also been amended to note The Post’s attempts to reach Alyte Mazeika and ThatUmbrellaGuy for comment. Previous versions omitted or inaccurately described these attempts.

You may have noticed that the correction doesn’t really describe what happened here. Here’s the revised paragraph from the story. [emphasis added]

The content creator Alyte Mazeika earned $5,000 in one week by pivoting the content on her YouTube channel to nonstop trial coverage and analysis, according to Business Insider. She declined to comment for this story. ThatUmbrellaGuy, an anonymous YouTuber whose entire channel is dedicated to pro-Depp content, earned up to $80,000 last month, according to an estimate by social analytics firm Social Blade. ThatUmbrellaGuy could not be reached for comment. Orec said he earned over $5,400 last month in Instagram Reels bonus payments.

So, it’s true I guess that they declined to comment but no one reading the revised story or the correction would know that the Post initially claimed they didn’t respond even though neither of them had been contacted. Only after they complained were they contacted at which point they declined to comment. Someone who comes across this a month or a year from now won’t know about any of that and would have a hard time piecing it together. It seems more like a cover-up than a correction.

This isn’t the first time Lorenz has been been caught making false and misleading claims and it won’t be the last time. Here’s the full YouTube show featuring Mazeika. I have this cued up to her arrival on the show.

Update: The Post has revised its correction to more accurately (well, maybe, please keep reading) reflect what happened here and also moved it to the top of the story.

The first published version of this story stated incorrectly that Internet influencers Alyte Mazeika and ThatUmbrellaGuy had been contacted for comment before publication. In fact, only Mazeika was asked, via Instagram. After the story was published, The Post continued to seek comment from Mazeika via social media and queried ThatUmbrellaGuy for the first time. During that process, The Post removed the incorrect statement from the story but did not note its removal, a violation of our corrections policy. The story has been updated to note that Mazeika declined to comment for this story and ThatUmbrellaGuy could not be reached for comment.

A previous version of this story also inaccurately attributed a quote to Adam Waldman, a lawyer for Johnny Depp. The quote described how he contacted some Internet influencers and has been removed.

Clearly, someone at the Post spoke to Lorenz before revising that correction. You don’t revise a correction without making very sure you’re getting the story right the 2nd time around. And in this case, Lorenz must have told them that she hadn’t contacted both creators but she had contacted Alyte Mazeika on Instagram prior to publication. That’s Lorenz’ story to her own editors.

But Mazeika clarified today that’s still not accurate. Lorenz did reach out on Instagram but only after publication. She tweeted, “Please stop lying and take the L.”

@washingtonpost: “Democracy dies in darkness.”

Also WaPo: “We’re going to keep the facts in the dark so we can continue our self-serving narrative that we’re more virtuous than independent content creators.”

— Legal Bytes 🍽💙 (@legalbytesmedia) June 4, 2022

Meanwhile the only thing I seen on Lorenz’ Twitter account about this is her retweet of this explanation. I don’t know who Chris Bennet is or how she claims to know this but it doesn’t really explain anything. As I asked above, why would an editor add this specific claim about contacting sources to a story on their own?

So the bottom line is that even if you believe the initial claim about contacting both people was an error introduced by an editor, today’s correction contains an error that can only have come from Taylor Lorenz because there’s just no way correction draft #2 was written without having a more exhaustive discussion/correspondence with her.

As I see it, there are only three options here. One, the Post editor is very confused and didn’t understand what Lorenz said. This seems unlikely given that this is the second correction. Two, Mazeika is either confused or lying about when she was contacted on Instagram. I have no reason to believe this is the case but mistakes can happen. Or three, Taylor Lorenz lied to her editor about when she contacted Mazeika (claiming it was pre-publication when it was actually after the fact). Maybe the Washington Post should get to the bottom of this given that 2 out of 3 options involve problems with their own staff.

Update: The Fox News media reporter who covered this story yesterday has seen the receipts from Alyte Mazeika. They prove the contact from Lorenz came after publication.

WaPo: "After the story was published, The Post continued to seek comment from Mazeika via social media and queried ThatUmbrellaGuy for the first time."

Screenshots of time stamps shared w/ Fox News show Lorenz contacted Mazeika on Instagram AFTER the story was published.

3/

— Joseph A. Wulfsohn (@JosephWulfsohn) June 4, 2022

Fox News reached out to WaPo to ask whether Lorenz claimed to her editors she contacted Mazeika on IG prior to publishing without having actually shown her message and whether Lorenz will face repercussions if it is revealed she was dishonest to her employer.

No response.

5/

— Joseph A. Wulfsohn (@JosephWulfsohn) June 4, 2022

So I think we’re down to only two possibilities now. Either the editor who wrote correction 2.0 is very confused or Taylor Lorenz made a claim to her editor that wasn’t true. I guess we’ll see if Lorenz gets yet another chance at an explanation and the Post issues correction 3.0. This really does not look like an innocent mistake at this point.

Update: This is already absurdly long at this point but Taylor Lorenz just did a Twitter thread about this.

The line was a sentence saying that I reached out to 2 YouTubers for comment for my story. The inclusion of the YouTubers was only in passing, citing another outlet’s reporting.

— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) June 4, 2022

So I guess that’s an admission that she did not reach out to those two YouTubers in advance. The next tweet makes that more explicit.

The mention of these two individuals was not remotely the focus of my story. It's become a huge distraction. I spoke to over two dozen creators for my story about the trial, along with other experts who are quoted in the piece.

— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) June 4, 2022

We have a responsibility to recognize these bad faith campaigns for what they are and when these sorts of things do and do not warrant acknowledgment.

— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) June 4, 2022

I know that the stuff I write about and go through is hugely unfamiliar to the vast majority of people in media! I have great hope that all of us can learn from this experience.

— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) June 4, 2022

All of that might explain how the initial line about contacting those two individuals in advance appeared and was removed from the story. It definitely does not explain why the 2nd draft of the correction which appeared above the story last night and is still there now claims she contacted Alyte Mazeika in advance. Here’s the opening part of the Editor’s Note:

The first published version of this story stated incorrectly that Internet influencers Alyte Mazeika and ThatUmbrellaGuy had been contacted for comment before publication. In fact, only Mazeika was asked, via Instagram. After the story was published, The Post continued to seek comment from Mazeika via social media and queried ThatUmbrellaGuy for the first time.

When will they correct the correction? Who told the editor that Mazeika had been contacted prior to publication on Instagram? Lorenz doesn’t say and you can’t reply to her tweets. She’s unhappy with CNN as well.

It just shows how much more journalists at mainstream outlets need to learn about disinfo, extremism, and the new media landscape. Big name reporters should not still be falling for this stuff. This is why coverage of this area and “internet culture” is so important. https://t.co/LcHgfzfm9m

— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) June 4, 2022

Read my actual thread here. And stop falling for far right disinfo and harassment campaigns https://t.co/C9j5Oyojs8

— Taylor Lorenz (@TaylorLorenz) June 4, 2022

I guess I’m part of this “disinfo and harassment” campaign? I’ve written 1,500 words on this so far, carefully laying out all the original tweets, links and sources for everything so no one has to take my word on it. I’ve including what the Post and Lorenz herself have said about it. How is that disinformation? The bottom line is that the Editor’s Note is still wrong according to the person Lorenz supposedly contacted and according to Lorenz herself.

Oh, idk about that, Taylor, I believe @ThatUmbrella and I both gave commentary to add—just not the kind you wanted to include.

And for the record, your latest editor’s note is still not correct. https://t.co/RhArkSbAky

— Legal Bytes 🍽💙 (@legalbytesmedia) June 4, 2022

I think we would all love it if journalists like yourself would learn about disinfo…

Particularly, maybe not putting it out there? And *actually* correcting it when you make a mistake?

After all, the underlying article is all about journalistic ethics, is it not? https://t.co/4OYZZft8WD

— Legal Bytes 🍽💙 (@legalbytesmedia) June 4, 2022