In a breach of journalistic ethics, Julia Wong from the far-left British newspaper Guardian deliberately omitted key facts in a recently published smear job of Breitbart News and is refusing to come clean about the article, including the decision to allow the discredited Southern Poverty Law Center to make disparaging claims while leaving out Breitbart’s responses.
When reached by phone for comment, senior technology reporter Julia Carrie Wong refused to answer questions about the inaccuracies in her Guardian story, referring all queries to her editor. She then hung up the phone on a Breitbart News reporter.
Later, she rushed to portray herself as a victim by posting screenshots of Breitbart’s questions to her on Twitter.
Julia Wong has a history of using her Twitter account to malign her ideological foes as “racist” and has wielded the term “white people” in pejorative ways. “My favorite thing about civility is that I don’t give a flying fuck about it,” she once tweeted.
Her article titled “White nationalists are openly operating on Facebook. The company won’t act” was published Thursday and inaccurately conflates Breitbart News with white nationalists and members of the alt-right, even though Breitbart has no affiliation with them and even has a reputation for promoting minorities in top editorial posts.
Breitbart News leaders agreed to speak with Wong by phone and to answer her written questions. As part of its responses, Breitbart sent her a Harvard-MIT study and a New York Times magazine article that concluded Breitbart has no affiliation with these groups.
But these responses didn’t appear in the published article.
Instead, the Guardian gave an open platform to the SPLC, a leftist partisan organization that was recently ordered by a court to pay $3.4 million to British political activist Maajid Nawaz for defaming him as an “anti-Muslim extremist,” even though he is Muslim.
The SPLC has also falsely labeled human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who is Somali born and a victim of female genital mutilation, as an anti-Muslim extremist.
In the article, the Guardian allowed Heidi Beirich, the director of the SPLC Intelligence Project, to claim Breitbart is a “conduit of conspiracy theory and racism into the conservative movement.” But the article makes no mention of the SPLC’s libelous practices and partisan biases.
The Guardian article also falsely accused a Breitbart story of “promoting the alt-right” movement.
The 2016 Breitbart article in question, “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right,” never promoted the movement but rather served as an explainer of its many factions. Bloomberg News included the Breitbart article in its “Jealousy List” of articles they wished they had written for 2016.
This isn’t the first time that Julia Wong has faced criticism for her journalistic shortcomings.
Her reporting on a 2017 Guardian story about a seastedding project backed in part by billionaire Trump supporter Peter Thiel was deemed “lousy” for insulting French Polynesians and for misleading readers about the tax implications of such an endeavor.
When reached via email, Guardian west coast editor Malik Meer declined to answer all questions from Breitbart, instead sending a statement that he said should be attributed to a spokesperson.
While the Guardian refused to publish all of Breitbart’s answers to its questions, Breitbart is publishing the Guardian‘s statement in its entirety:
We stand by our reporting. This story is predominantly about white nationalists operating on Facebook. Where we mention Breitbart we have clearly included comments from Breitbart in response, as well as a quote from your former chairman, Steve Bannon.
The Guardian has experienced a number of public embarrassments in recent years. The newspaper was forced to retract 13 articles and excerpts from other stories in 2016 after a freelancer couldn’t provide evidence to back up his reporting.
More recently, the Guardian was forced to delete sections of an article about Candace Owens that inaccurately claimed that the conservative activist and speaker once defended neo-Nazis. The newspaper retracted the claim after Owens, who is African American, threatened to sue the Guardian for libel.
Like many mainstream media organizations, the Guardian has been called out for the liberal biases of its reporters and editors, some of whom freely express their radical political and cultural views on social media.
Julia Wong, who wrote Thursday’s article, has a history of using the words “racist” and “white people” to describe people she disagrees with. As a freelancer for Salon, she covered the intersection of social justice and technology, at one point calling for the dismantling of “white patriarchy.”
Wong recently called British pop star Morrissey a racist after he wore a shirt reading “Fuck the Guardian” while performing at a Hollywood Bowl concert.
She also called gay journalist Andrew Sullivan a racist when he argued on Twitter that “preventing illegal immigration is not racist… it’s integral to any democracy functioning.”
Wong has also used the term “white people” in pejorative ways on social media. In a deleted tweet from 2016, she called for a “moratorium on white people writing about what it means to be basic.” A post from this year slammed “white people” for defending Chelsea Clinton’s criticisms about Rep. Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitic tweets.
Julia Wong didn’t reply to questions from Breitbart News about her past tweets.
Follow David Ng on Twitter @HeyItsDavidNg. Have a tip? Contact me at dng@breitbart.com