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More than 100 staffers from the Associated Press signed an open letter slamming the recent firing of Emily Wilder, a news associate who was let go after pro-Palestinian social media posts she had written when she was in college went viral.
Wilder was ousted Friday over an alleged violation of the outlet s social media policy, after being hired by the news wire in April. Now, her former colleagues are demanding answers. As employees of The Associated Press, at all levels and across the globe, we strongly believe in our organization’s stated commitment to fairness and advancing the power of facts. Journalists demand transparency from the subjects of our reporting and seek to hold the powerful accountable, the AP staffers began the open letter. That’s why we strongly disapprove of the way the AP has handled the firing of Emily Wilder and its dayslong silence internally. We d
AP Journalist fired after right-wing campaign over Palestinian activism
Emily Wilder (Twitter/@vv1lder)
The decision to fire Wilder came after the Stanford chapter of the College Republicans launched an online campaign to discredit the newly hired journalist. The campaign garnered support from a slew of right-wing figures like Ben Shapiro, Robert Spencer, and Senator Tom Cotton who all called for her removal.
Wilder had started working for the AP on May 3. Just two weeks later, the Stanford College Republicans posted on Facebook and Twitter claiming to have “exposed” a supposed anti-Israel bias on the part of the AP by hiring Wilder. The posts denounced Wilder as an “anti-Israel agitator” for her participation in demonstrations by the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a Jewish activist group that is opposed to Zionism.
Western media has a systemic bias against Palestinians
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Nearly all media coverage of the situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is biased toward Israel and against Palestine and if you don’t know what to look for, you might never see it.
As news about Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories comes at us from our televisions, our computers and our social media feeds, we may wish to find an “unbiased” source of information; it’s a complicated issue, after all, and the specter of media bias hangs over every contentious topic. But on some issues such as the situation in Israel and Palestine media bias clearly goes one way, and it runs deep. Even advocating for Palestinian rights can get one fired from mainstream news media.
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In her first TV interview, we speak with Emily Wilder, the young reporter fired by the Associated Press after she was targeted in a Republican smear campaign for her pro-Palestinian activism in college. Wilder is Jewish and was a member of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace at Stanford University before she graduated in 2020. She was two weeks into her new job with the AP when the Stanford College Republicans singled out some of her past social media posts, triggering a conservative frenzy. The AP announced Wilder’s firing shortly thereafter, citing unspecified violations of its social media policy. “Less than 48 hours after Stanford College Republicans began to post about me, I was fired,” says Wilder. “I was not given an explanation for what social media policy I had violated.” Over 100 AP journalists have signed an open letter to management protesting the decision to fire Wilder, w