Pro-Trump Site Decides to Stand By Op-Ed Even After It Was Revealed to Be Written By Fake Person

The conservative website Human Events acknowledged on Tuesday that last year it had published an op-ed slamming Qatar’s role in Middle East politics that was apparently written by a fake person. But then, in its editor’s note on the fraudulently-authored piece, Human Events explained that it still stands by the op-ed even if it has no idea who actually wrote it.

The embarrassing revelation came after an exposé by The Daily Beast, which revealed an orchestrated campaign of more than 90 op-eds pushing Middle East propaganda across nearly four-dozen news organizations like the Jerusalem Post, Al-Arabiya, and the South China Morning Post as well as right-wing opinion sites like the Washington Examiner, American Thinker, Newsmax, The National Interest, and Human Events. In all, The Daily Beast identified 19 authors built around phony Middle East opinion sites and fake identities, with the personas apparently pulled from random photos on the Internet and then mirrored to apparently defeat possible Google image searches.

“The articles heaped praise on the United Arab Emirates and advocated for a tougher approach to Qatar, Turkey, Iran and its proxy groups in Iraq and Lebanon,” The Daily Beast noted of the propaganda effort. Many of the other news sites, after being alerted of the propaganda campaign, took down the fraudulently-written op-eds.

However, Human Events took a different approach in acknowledging that it had published a December 2019 op-ed entitled “Qatar is Destabilizing the Middle East” by a non-existent “Joyce Toledano.” Because the op-ed included no “factual errors”—other than  the obvious false byline—Human Events concluded “we still agree with the thesis of the piece” and that “we are keeping the piece up.”

On July 6, 2020, The Daily Beast published an article suggesting that the original author of this piece, “Joyce Toledano,” does not exist, and that a slew of publications—including the Jerusalem Post,the Washington Examiner, Al-Arabiya, the South China Morning post, among others—unknowingly published articles by a network of “fake journalists,” who used sophisticated techniques to disguise their identity. Nowhere in the Daily Beast’s reporting is there any suggestion that any of the factual claims made in the substance of this piece are false.

We have reviewed the substance of this piece, and have not found any factual errors—and we still agree with the thesis of the piece. As such, we are keeping the piece up, and adopting its arguments as a publication.

Human Events’ editor-in-chief, Will Chamberlain, offered a more extensive defense of the site’s editorial decision in a Twitter thread.

The Beast’s investigation suggests that “Joyce Toledano” – the author of the @HumanEvents piece “Qatar Is Destabilizing The Middle East” – does not exist, and that sophisticated techniques were used to disguise her identity. pic.twitter.com/hSA746V3Qy

— Will Chamberlain ?? (@willchamberlain) July 7, 2020

Human Events runs with a small team. We prioritize ensuring that our articles make accurate factual claims and defensible arguments. After having reviewed the piece in question, we think it holds up – even if we were deceived as to authorship.https://t.co/mRKP0FgxMC

— Will Chamberlain ?? (@willchamberlain) July 7, 2020

Alluding to the new byline on the anonymously-written piece, which now reads “by Human Events,” Chamberlain said the site has “adopted the article’s argument as our own”

Indeed, we agree with the underlying argument. Qatar is a bad actor. As such, we’ve adopted the article’s argument as our own. Nowhere in @thedailybeast’s article is any suggestion that the pieces were substantively wrong, or that any of the factual claims were false.

— Will Chamberlain ?? (@willchamberlain) July 7, 2020

Noting that the site “runs with a small team,” Chamberlain also explained that “in the future, we’ll dig more deeply into author bios.” But he then seemed to backtrack on that promise of editorial rigor by claiming that “extreme vetting of our authors would deter less established contributors.”

In the future, we’ll dig more deeply into author bios.That said, doing extreme vetting of our authors would deter less established contributors from submitting pieces: and we are focused on the quality of the argument, not the strength of the author’s credentials.

— Will Chamberlain ?? (@willchamberlain) July 7, 2020

Chamberlain also couldn’t resist taking some potshots at The Daily Beast‘s media standards, tweeting out several TDB pieces that he felt were unfair and examples of journalistic “malfeasance.”

Further, we have little patience for lectures on journalistic ethics from @thedailybeast.

This is the publication that deceptively cropped a picture of @jackposobiec to falsely make it look like he was making a Nazi salute.

And that’s only the beginning of their malfeasance. pic.twitter.com/7WJ4YDkU0n

— Will Chamberlain ?? (@willchamberlain) July 7, 2020

In response to Chamberlain’s obvious attempt at whataboutism, The Daily Beast editor-in-chief Noah Shachtman said: “Our story was 100% written and edited by real people. And we stand by it.”