On Thursday, CBS News journalist and correspondent Wesley Lowery deleted a tweet calling a hospitalized Queen Elizabeth II an “oppressive ruler” shortly before Buckingham Palace announced the monarch’s passing.
Alex Griswold shared a screenshot of the deleted comment, adding just the word “deleted” in his own caption.
“The death of a person seen as near deity by the (white) political, ruling and media class, but who was also at one point the oppressive ruler of something like 30% of the global population, is going to provide an excellent example of the subjectivity of ‘straight news reporting,’” Lowery’s tweet read.
https://twitter.com/HashtagGriswold/status/1567901159544717313?s=20&t=Sz4BSovKFreLLARNGsXFAQ“He didn’t realize that she took over after Indian independence is my guess?” Griswold theorized in a follow up tweet.
Critics were quick to respond to the journalist, many noting that he was an example of exactly the kind of subjective journalism he was attacking.
“This is a CBS reporter. He also is one of those privileged elite who the media insists is a necessary voice only because he sees racism everywhere and anything he doesn’t like is racism and you’re a racist if you disagree with him. Yet he is considered an objective reporter,” Erick Erickson argued.
CEO Pradeep Shankar noted that Lowery’s tweet significantly misjudged the size of the British Empire in 1952, the year that Queen Elizabeth’s reign began.
“This dumb tweet by @WesleyLowery is also an ignorant tweet,” he said. “Elizabeth came to power in 1952. British Empire had already largely come apart, especially crown jewel India, which gained independence in 1947. It also accounted for vast majority of population of the Commonwealth.”
Despite deleting the tweet, Lowery continued to act as though he had done nothing wrong and stuck to his guns in follow up tweets posted later in the day.
“You’re all right. Colonialism is in fact good. My bad lol,” he tweeted.
When someone asked why he had chosen to delete the original tweet, Lowery responded simply: “It was reductive — and that distracted from the broader point. And just didn’t think it was worth it to spend all day going back and forth on it.”
Queen Elizabeth II passed away peacefully among family members at Balmoral Castle in Scotland this morning. She was 96 years old.
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