MSNBC host, Joy Reid, was recently in news again for homophobic comments seen on one of her blogs. The posts were published years ago, but recently caught the media eye sending the host in trouble.
According to Reid, she never noticed the homophobic comments in the post and claims to have never written the subject matter. According to her, someone must have hacked into her blog and posted the content, however the claim seems to hold no water.
While she agrees to have posted the original blog, she also argues according to her, it was doctored by an unknown entity.
This is not the first time that Reid finds herself in such a controversy. Last year, a Twitter user highlighted some of her homophobic posts which caused her to apologize later as she accepted posting the content. However, this time she is adamant that she never made the statement.
To prove her point, the host went ahead and hired an attorney and a cyber security expert to file a case claiming that her blog had been attacked. According to latest reports, the FBI is also investigating the case.
The case was recently made public, but most think that it is nothing but the host’s attempt to save her face. According to Reid’s claims that seem to be supported by her lawyer and cybersecurity staff, someone got access to her password and made changes to the blog.
The biggest concern here is how Reid claims to be totally unaware of the happenings. Reid’s lawyer has sent two letters that highlight two different dates, January 10th and 11th, 2006. This is when most of her blogs were focused on Samuel Alito’s Supreme Court nomination. A lot of the blogs published back then used very strong language and seem to have been written by Reid. However, she says the homophobic comments were added by the hacker.
However if you access archives of her blog through different sources, you will notice that the archived blogs are the same as the blogs found on the original site, therefore since the archived version of the blog wasn’t hacked, her claim seems to be untrue.
This is not the first time that a celebrity has come out with such claims, and while a lot of them are true, some of them prove to be false. In Jo Reid’s case, her claims hold very little water, but this also shows how important it is for all of us to have better security on our websites so that no body can infiltrate and cause damage.