‘Washington Post’ reviews star columnist Taylor Lorenz's 'war criminal' jab at Biden

Senior editors at the Washington Post are reviewing a prominent tech columnist’s private story on social media, which appears to label President Biden a “war criminal” in a photo.

The Post’s Taylor Lorenz attended a White House event for digital influencers on Wednesday. In the photo she shared with a circle of friends on Instagram, Biden appears over her shoulder; the damning caption rests just below him, accompanied by a text frowny face.

After the New York Post’s Jon Levine — a frequent critic of hers — revealed the Instagram photo caption yesterday in a tweet, Lorenz wrote back at him: “You people will fall for any dumbass edit someone makes.”

A fact-check appended to Levine’s tweet cited her apparent denial. (The contextual note to the tweet says, “Taylor Lorenz says this is a digital manipulation which has added a false caption.”) Lorenz told her editors that someone else had added the caption to the photo.

NPR has obtained a screengrab of Lorenz’s actual post, which contained that caption. It was not shared with her wider Instagram audience of 143,000 followers.

Four people with direct knowledge of the private Instagram story confirmed its authenticity to NPR. They spoke to NPR on condition they not be identified due to the professional sensitivity of the situation for Lorenz.

“Our executive editor and senior editors take alleged violations of our standards seriously,” a spokesperson for the newspaper told NPR. “We’re aware of the alleged post and are looking into it.” Lorenz declined to comment.

Lorenz removes the picture from her private chat

About an hour after originally circulating it, Lorenz removed the picture with the “war criminal” caption from her private Instagram chat and publicly posted the same picture on social media - this time, with no such caption.

Some pro-Palestinian protesters have sought to tag Biden with the label “war criminal” for the deaths in Gaza caused by Israel, an American ally. The context of Lorenz’s posting, however, is not entirely clear; the phrasing and images — including a frowny face made with a colon and open parenthesis :( — closely tracks an online meme.

Lorenz has since told associates that a close friend took her posted picture and superimposed the caption upon it, as a joke, and that she shared it with the group on the private Instagram posting.

Lorenz has not been otherwise vocal about the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Lorenz covers digital culture for the Post and is herself fully immersed in it. She has won mass acclaim, showing up on “best of” lists. Her book Extremely Online was a national bestseller last year.

She previously wrote for the Daily Beast, Business Insider, the Atlantic magazine and then The New York Times.

Controversy in real life and online

Lorenz has also courted controversy, online, in print, and in real life.

During the peak of the pandemic, and since its ebb, she has inspired mockery from conservatives over her insistence on wearing masks, even outdoors. She has cited autoimmune issues as the reason.

On leaving the Times two years ago, Lorenz told Vanity Fair that she had hoped that paper would “evolve in their ways” in regard to digital culture and social media.

Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger and Executive Editor Joseph Kahn have called for an emphasis on journalistic independence and have urged staffers to shun online posting with ideological leanings or snark.

Though Lorenz writes many news articles, the Post has designated her a columnist, giving her more leeway in print and online.

Yet the Post itself has a tradition of reining in its journalists’ public social media remarks. In 2022, the Post fired reporter Felicia Sonmez for insubordination over her tweets about treatment of female journalists and suspended reporter Dave Weigel for relaying a joke seen as sexist. He left the paper several months later.