Daily Beast: Joy Reid’s Excuse for Homophobic Posts ‘Crumbles Under Scrutiny’, ‘None of the Images Are Faked or Doctored’

After the Daily Beast conducted their own investigation into the hacking claims of one of their columnists, MSNBC host Joy Reid, it concluded that “none of the images” of old homophobic posts “are faked or doctored,” and that Reid’s excuse “crumbles under scrutiny.”

“The Daily Beast investigated the MSNBC host’s claims that someone hacked her old blogs to make her appear homophobic and found that the evidence provided crumbles under scrutiny,” reported the Daily Beast’s Kevin Poulsen, who added that cybersecurity consultant Jonathan Nichols’ claims that “six posts are nowhere to be found in the Internet Archive,” were “not true.”

“Further searching on the Internet Archive turned up the posts for all six of the screenshots Nichols described as fakes, including the one about Eddie Murphy. The Internet Archive’s records indicate they were retrieved and stored between 2006 and 2009,” Poulsen explained. “And all six are exactly as they appear in the screenshots. A random check of other screenshots attributed to the blog produced the same result: None of the images are faked or doctored.”

Poulsen also revealed that allegedly fake labels on Reid’s old blog were in fact real labels, just created with a third-party service, and not Blogger.com.

On the labels excuse, Poulsen declared that “Reid made an apples-to-oranges comparison and concluded that because the apples were not oranges, they must be fake,” before noting the absurdity of Reid’s claims that a hacker might have been secretly adding his own blog posts for several years without her noticing.

In conclusion, Poulsen referred to Reid’s multi-layer excuse as “an extraordinary claim,” adding that, “so far the bits and pieces of evidence offered for it have not stood up to scrutiny when they’ve been specific enough to test.”

“After 12 years and tens of thousands of written words, Reid simply may not remember,” he claimed. “It’s possible that in the end Reid will discover her adversary isn’t a determined hacker, but a far more dogged foe: The Joy-Ann Reid of years past, writing in a voice she can no longer recognize as her own.”

In the old blog posts, Reid made several homophobic comments, including, “most straight people cringe at the sight of two men kissing,” and “adult gay men tend to be attracted to very young, post-pubescent types.”

“Most straight people had a hard time being convinced to watch ‘Broke Back Mountain.’ (I admit that I couldn’t go see the movie either, despite my sister’s ringing endorsement, because I didn’t want to watch the two male characters having sex.) Does that make me homophobic? Probably,” added Reid, while in others she referred to homosexuality as “gross,” expressed opposition to gay marriage, and accused dozens of celebrities of being gay.

Instead of apologizing for the remarks — which Reid did last time homophobic blog posts were discovered — the MSNBC host claimed the posts were the result of hackers who had managed to modify the Wayback Machine, a website used to view old sites which have since been changed or deleted.

However, a representative for the Wayback Machine claimed the company had “found nothing to indicate tampering or hacking of the Wayback Machine versions,” prompting Reid to make other excuses involving alleged doctored screenshots, and direct hacking of the blog itself.

Reid’s excuse has been widely doubted, including by security experts, while an LGBT organization rescinded an award to the MSNBC host.