UPDATE: WashPost Caught Stealth Editing Lorenz Lies About Comment Requests

UPDATE 6/4/22 11:37 a.m. The Washington Post’s Editor’s Note claims that LegalBytes reached them via Instagram before publication. LegalBytes has protested this assertion. Continue reading.

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The Washington Post got caught trying to secretly clean up a mess on Friday after hatchetman, doxxer, pathological liar, and “internet culture” writer Taylor Lorenz lied on Thursday about reaching out to two YouTube content creatures she targeted over their videos about the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial. This ironically happens as Lorenz is promoting Heard’s defamation conviction earlier in the week.

In her piece titled “Who won the Depp-Heard trial? Content creators that went all-in,” two of the content creators she targeted were an anonymous pro-Depp YouTuber who goes by ThatUmbrellaGuy and licensed attorney LegalBytes. They committed a crime. They make money from making popular videos.

Alyte Mazeika, a content creator for YouTube, earned $5,000 just by making her YouTube channel more focused on trial coverage. She also did analysis and reporting. According to Business Insider. (…)  ThatUmbrellaGuy, an anonymous YouTuber whose entire channel is dedicated to pro-Depp content, earned up to $80,000 last month, according to an estimate by social analytics firm Social Blade.

In her original story, Lorenz falsely claimed she had reached out and both and they “did not respond to requests for comment” (included below).

Shortly after Lorenz’s article went live, LegalBytes called her out on her lies. “Um. It means that I haven’t responded to any requests for comment. I know I’ve gotten a lot of emails over the past two months, but I’ve just double checked for your name, @TaylorLorenz, and I see no email from you,” she tweeted.

She also called out Lorenz for mischaracterizing her coverage of the Depp-Heard trial as a hard “pivot.” “Also, I didn’t suddenly pivot. I started covering this before trial began,” she wrote.

Um. This indicates that I did not respond to comments requests. While I am aware that I received lots of emails during the past two-months, I double-checked for your identity. @TaylorLorenzI do not see any email from your side.

Also, my pivot didn’t happen suddenly. This was the first thing I covered before my trial started. https://t.co/7qHTrOsfHQ pic.twitter.com/yJzzqS8ggS

— Legal Bytes 🍽💙 (@legalbytesmedia) June 3, 2022

A quick look at LegalBytes’s videos and it’s clear she covers high-profile court cases including the Kyle Rittenhouse trial.

At some point on Thursday in the blowback The PostThe article was stealthily edited to hide the fact that Lorenz never reached out to them, even though she claimed to have. This stealth edit was discovered by Fox News Digital’s Joseph A. Wulfsohn.

Upon reaching out to the paper, they told him “The story has also been amended to note The Post’s attempts to reach Alyte Mazeika and ThatUmbrellaGuy for comment. These attempts were not accurately or completely omitted from previous versions. They eventually published that as part of an Editor’s Note, where they admit Lorenz also misattributed a quote to one of Depp’s lawyers.

But the saga doesn’t end there.

Further details will be available on Friday The Post pushed out this beefy Editor’s Note:

Incorrectly, the first publication of this story claimed that ThatUmbrellaGuy & Alyte Mazeika were contacted to comment on the article before it was published. In reality, Mazeika was the only one who was contacted via Instagram. The Post asked Mazeika for comment via Instagram after the story had been published. ThatUmbrellaGuy was also queried. The Post corrected the error in the story, but didn’t note it. This story was updated to reflect that Mazeika refused to comment on this story, and ThatUmbrellaGuy couldn’t be reached for comment.

An earlier version of this story incorrectly misattributed an inaccurate quote to Adam Waldman (a Johnny Depp lawyer). This quote, which described his contact with some Internet influencers, has since been deleted.

The paper did not explain why Lorenz claimed she reached out the YouTubers because an editor permitted it. It was not explained why the editor allowed Lorenz to say she reached out the YouTubers only after the article had been published. And, when the comments were sent, Lorenz was found lying.

Their Friday Editor’s Note and the Saturday Current Note are available. The Post According to LegalBytes, Mazeika was the only one who asked for comments from YouTubers when they tried to reach them via Instagram. LegalBytes disagrees with their claim, posting on Twitter:

What?! @washingtonpostThis is what I’ll say AGAIN.

I wasn’t reached to by @TaylorLorenz for comment until after my tweet below. After her tweet on Twitter, she reached me via IG DM. After I had called her here, both DMs were sent.

Please stop lying and take the L. https://t.co/5mylhJTU9f pic.twitter.com/ZfS7BUCeDF

— Legal Bytes 🍽💙 (@legalbytesmedia) June 4, 2022

Journalism dies at The Washington Post.