Joy Reid denied accusations claiming she had made homophobic remarks on her now-defunct blog a decade ago on Saturday morning. The comments were part of an apology she made while she opened her MSNBC show, “AM Joy."
"Many of you have seen these blog posts circulating online and on social media. Many of them are homophobic, discriminatory and outright weird and hateful," she said. "I spent a lot of time trying to make sense of these posts. I hired cybersecurity experts to see if somebody had manipulated my words or my former blog, and the reality is they have not been able to prove it."
"I genuinely do not believe I wrote those hateful things because they are completely alien to me,” she added. “But I can definitely understand based on things I have tweeted and have written in the past why some people don't believe me."
"Those tweets were wrong and horrible," she said. "I'm heartbroken that I didn't do better back then."
"I have not been exempt from being dumb or cruel or hurtful to the very people I want to advocate for. I own that. I get it. And for that I am truly, truly sorry," she added.
Reid spent 30 minutes of the show with a panel of LGBT rights experts.
Separate blog posts were resurfaced late last year where Reid used offensive language to mock former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. Reid again apologized for her self-described “insensitive, tone deaf and dumb” remarks. The latest alleged comments surfaced by Twitter user @Jamie_Maz are far more serious. "Couldn’t go see [Brokeback Mountain] 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,” a post read.
The Daily Beast suspended Reid's column following allegations. Noah Shachtman, executive editor of The Daily Beast, sent a memo to the outlet's staff announcing the decision: "We’re going to hit pause on Reid’s columns," the memo said.
"As you’re well aware, support for LGBTQ rights and respect for human dignity are core to The Daily Beast. So we’re taking seriously the new allegations that one of our columnists, Joy Reid, previously wrote homophobic blog posts during her stint as a radio host," Schactman added.
The news was first reported by CNN's Oliver Darcy.
The posts were discovered through Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine; the website disputed Reid's claims Tuesday.
"When we reviewed the archives, we found nothing to indicate tampering or hacking of the Wayback Machine versions," the Internet Archive post said. "We let Reid’s lawyers know that the information provided was not sufficient for us to verify claims of manipulation."
Shares