IJR suspends three over Obama conspiracy post
Politico via OnMedia
IJR suspends three over Obama conspiracy post
By HADAS GOLD 03/21/17 01:41 PM EDT
Independent Journal Review has suspended three staffers including Chief Content Officer Benny Johnson after the publication last week of a conspiracy-laden post about President Barack Obama that was subsequently retracted.
The post, published last week, alleged that Obama's "surprise" visit to Hawaii could somehow have been connected to a federal judge's ruling on President Donald Trump's travel ban. Its publication led to the site's congressional reporter to resign, citing the conflict between his own credibility and the site posting right-wing conspiracy theories also found on sites like InfoWars.
In a statement provided to Business Insider, which first broke news of the suspension, IJR founder Alex Skatell said the writer of the original post Kyle Becker, content editor Becca Lower and Johnson had been suspended.
"We are committed to an editorial team that includes voices, perspectives and geographies that span the country but equally committed to quality standards in our newsroom," Skatell said. "As we've grown, we've sought to improve on that front and last month we launched our six-person editorial operations team along with enforcement and review for all editorial content. Last week, we got it wrong and ultimately deserve all the criticism if we want to be taken seriously. As a result of last week's failure, Kyle Becker has been suspended indefinitely as well as his supervisor and Chief Content Officer Benny Johnson and the content editor approving the post, Becca Lower. We are reviewing all the details to determine if further action is necessary, this ultimately falls on me to get right and we have to do better in the future."
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