Judge, jury, and execution by the keyboard mob used to be the domain of social media, but mainstream media, frustrated with the constraints of merely publishing ideological propaganda, have joined in the real action—destroying the life of a random woman, and her family, for engineered hate speech.
The Minnesota Star Tribune actively participated in a self-styled—”activist” gives him way too much credit: bog standard women hater given a free pass, is more like it—plan to incite a woman into saying something he could spin as hate to feed the narrative that women’s rights supporters are “anti-trans” and violent, and therefore deserving of destruction.
The Star Tribune has been trying to gin up that same conceit, but, up until now, has limited their efforts to bias and lying in print. It’s been frustrating, uphill work for frothing trans activists and the Star Tribune—I’m redundant—because women’s rights advocates are so spitefully and willfully focused on women’s rights. The two Sophie Cunningham rallies in Minneapolis, witnessed by hundreds of average Minnesotans, demonstrated all too clearly from which side the unhinged violence is spewing.
Frustrated by their inability to goad organized women’s rights groups into some display of hate, Darnell Edwards focused his phone on lone women outside the event where Riley Gaines was speaking as his fellow “protester” Derek Torstenson assaulted them verbally, waiting for their angry response. Edwards hit record, edited out incriminating context, posted it to his Instagram, and loosed the baying Be Kind mob on the unfortunate victim. Such a vile, hateful attack should never have left social media, but it did.
Torstenson and Edwards tried it first on me. Three days later, I was horrified to see that, not only had the gutter-dwellers successfully goaded some random young woman into an angry response, but the Star Tribune had plucked it from the cesspool of social media, stinking of progressive totalitarianism, called it news, and participated in the mob execution of a powerless woman.
The Star Tribune, from reporting intern Samantha Siedow to managing editor Eric Wieffering, publisher Steve Grove, and owner Glen Taylor, abandoned any pretense of journalism, and teamed up with people they would never ever socialize with to deliberately destroy a random woman’s life, and that of her entire family. Once they abandoned journalism, it was only a matter of time before the Star Tribune joined the vilest practitioners of hate and violence, the blood sport of “progressivism.”
At each shameful step, the Star Tribune staff actively ignored every journalistic standard in service of publicly smearing, a 19-year-old woman. A partial list of their crimes:
The Star Tribune did not send a professional reporter or photographer to the Turning Point event on October 14. They had no intention of reporting on the facts.
The Star Tribune has surrendered professional news decisions to social media metrics, trawling for “viral” posts that support their favored narratives, which they elevate unchanged from social media slop to mainstream legitimacy
The Star Tribune allowed undergraduate intern reporter Samantha Siedow, who claims to “report” on civil rights and social justice issues, to indulge in a blatant ad hominem attack based on incomplete facts, deleted context, and a single biased unprofessional source. They published it either without editorial oversight, or, more disturbingly, with staff oversight.
The Star Tribune story starts out saying that their source, Darnell Edwards, had encouraged his social media followers to contact the young woman’s school, which he revealed, and demand that she be investigated and expelled. Instead of decrying this mob assignment of guilt and call for punishment, the Star Tribune joined in judging the young woman’s guilt
The Star Tribune did zero due diligence on Samantha Siedow’s only source, Darnell Edwards, a man who identifies as a model, and is exquisitely sensitive to hate speech, except words like “cunt” and “fuck transphobes” and “bigot” and “that bitch is drunk” and “fuck Riley Gaines” that the alleged “victim,” Derek Torstenson, shouted at women while Edwards recorded it.
Edwards has since recorded other “incidents of racist hate,” by young college-age women, apparently in a nightclub, posted to his Instagram. He sent these recordings to the women’s universities, demanding that they, too, be punished
The Star Tribune was “unable to locate” the young woman they framed for comment, unsurprisingly, since their source, Darnell Edwards, had doxxed the woman and her family members, and they all had had to cancel their social media accounts and change their phone numbers, such was the violence visited on them by the Be Kind mob.
The Star Tribune was unable find anyone else to deny or corroborate Darnell Edwards’ version of the incident. They published anyway
The Star Tribune transcribed the young woman’s words because the audio from the clip is muddled, having been poorly edited. Darnell Edwards was quite sure of what the young woman said, but either did not record or edited out the alleged “victim’s” part of the exchange.
The Star Tribune did not speak with the “victim,” Derek Torstenson, to ask what he said previous to and after the young woman’s comment
The Star Tribune published a story accusing a young woman of racist hate based on a single source who is the person accusing her
The Star Tribune published Darnell Edwards’ video that showed only the young woman, not the alleged “victim” of her “hateful”response. Her response, “Go back to your own country, bitch,” and the lack of context allowed the idea to flourish that the “victim” was a black or brown person, rather than the truth—the “victim” was a white man with no audible non-English accent that might explain her comment. The lack of context also fails to explain this apparently racist comment at an event that did not involve race but did involve men in women’s sports
The Star Tribune story on 10/17 linked to Darnell Edwards’ Instagram, where he doxxed the young woman, posting her name, where she went to university, her major, and suggesting to his followers that she should be investigated by her school and expelled for racist hate. Within 24 hours, the young woman and her family had been so viciously attacked by Edwards’ followers, they cancelled their social media accounts and changed their phone numbers. Within five days, the student wrote a groveling apology to the man who had verbally abused and incited her response, and withdrew from school.
The Star Tribune published Darnell Edwards’ video three different times, though it is of very low quality and has been edited to remove any audible comments from the “protesters” either preceding or following her response, that would have added context to the incident
The Star Tribune was familiar with the offensive baiting tactics of the alleged “victim,” Derek Torstenson, and the many angry responses from those he has verbally assaulted at other events. They ignored this context
The Star Tribune ignored video documentation of the “victim,” Derek Torstenson, baiting me earlier at the same event in the same way he baited the St Thomas student
The Star Tribune mentioned the number of social media views of the one-sided, edited video clip as evidence of the legitimacy of the story and the young woman’s guilt
The Star Tribune used the giant sized execrable edited video, after they knew it was set up to frame the young woman, in two further articles
This is one of 13 posts Darnell Edwards posted to his Instagram of this incident. Not once, ever, does he show what Derek Torstenson said to the woman before or after her response. His followers don’t ask because this is social media, but neither did the Star Tribune. That’s their job.
Here, again, is the “victim” Derek Torstenson trying to get me to respond by calling me names at the same Turning Point event. I sent this to Eric Wieffering, Managing Editor at the Star Tribune, for the context that was missing from their set up of the young woman. He ignored it. The Star Tribune did not seek to talk to Torstenson about his part of the exchange
This is the Star Tribune’s only source, Darnell Edwards. One of the 13 posts he put on Instagram, violating the young woman’s privacy and seeking punishment. This is not journalism, it’s a vile smear campaign that ruined a woman’s life. The Star Tribune used only this source for their three articles about this engineered incident
Here is the “victim” of the young woman’s “hate speech.” I sent the Star Tribune this photo. They are familiar with Torstenson and his tactics. In fact, they teamed up with Torstenson and Darnell Edwards in busing, shaming, doxxing, smearing, and ruining a young woman’s life. She wrote a groveling apology to this pocket of pus, and withdrew from school, cancelled her social media accounts, and changed her phone number
Words cannot describe how sickened I am
Sarah, have you or the young woman who was harassed by the trans Stasi contacted Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression to get their help? You may know them. They track, study, and fight for freedom of speech and could be a great resource in this case. They recently published a Substack essay arguing that the speech codes commonly used by colleges have trained a generation to thought-police neighbors, teachers, colleagues... "An Orwellian hell," as they characterize it.... I think FIRE would want to know about this instance of a media outlet attacking a citizen's right to express herself.
Most of the media are all aboard the "trans" train. They abdicated their journalistic responsibility long ago.