After Washington Post technology writer Taylor Lorenz was criticized on social media for errors in her Thursday column about YouTube content creators’ coverage of the Depp/Heard trial, the newspaper issued a correction on Friday.
The correction, which also addressed a quote that had been misattributed to Depp’s lawyer Adam Waldman, reads: “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.”
A rep for the Washington Post declined to comment about potential disciplinary action for Lorenz and referred TheWrap to the published correction.
ThatUmbrellaGuy tweeted that Lorenz did not reach out to him before running the story, which included estimates of how much money he made from his pro-Depp videos about the defamation trial.
“Taylor Lorenz wrote an obvious smear piece conflating Depp support with financial gain. She flagrantly ignored the fact I’ve covered this case for year…. she lied about contacting me in The Washington Post and tried covering this up AFTER I called it out publicly,” he wrote on Friday in a series of tweets.
Lorenz’s story also referenced Mazeika’s April Business Insider profile, which stated she made as much as $5,000 a week for livestreaming the trial. But Mazeika, whose YouTube channel is called Legal Bytes, told the National Review that Lorenz did not contact her until after being “called out” on Twitter.
Monica has a BA in Journalism and English from the University of Massachusetts and an MS in Journalism and Communications from Quinnipiac University. Monica has worked as a journalist for over 20 years covering all things entertainment. She has covered everything from San Diego Comic-Con, The SAG Awards, Academy Awards, and more. Monica has been published in Variety, Swagger Magazine, Emmy Magazine, CNN, AP, Hidden Remote, and more. For the past 10 years, she has added PR and marketing to her list of talents as the president of Prime Entertainment Publicity, LLC. Monica is ready for anything and is proudly obsessed with pop culture.
