Associated Press Reporter Out After Conservatives Flag Pro-Palestine Activism in College
Reporter Emily Wilder, who joined the Associated Press last month, is no longer working at the company, Mediaite has confirmed. Her departure comes after a chapter of the College Republicans flagged her involvement in a pro-Palestine group while in college, as well as comments she made about Israel and Palestine.
Reached for comment, a representative for the AP told Mediaite, “Emily Wilder no longer works for the AP. We refrain from commenting on personnel matters.”
On Monday, the Stanford College Republicans highlighted Wilder’s past involvement in pro-Palestine activism and tweeted screenshots from social media accounts purporting to belong to Wilder, who is Jewish and grew up in an Orthodox community in Phoenix. The thread notes that Wilder once belonged to Students for Justice in Palestine, which has more than 200 chapters across North America. The group also took issue with Wilder’s descriptions of late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson as a “naked mole rat” and Ben Shapiro as a “little turd.”
The Stanford College Republicans also claim that Students for Justice in Palestine has “ties to Hamas affiliates,” though the conservative group did not elaborate.
Subsequently, Fox News and The Federalist ran stories describing Wilder as being “anti-Israel.”
Recently, we discovered that the Associated Press has hired former Stanford anti-Israel agitator, Emily Wilder, who referred to the late Sheldon Adelson as a “naked mole rat” as one of their “journalists.” @vv1lder pic.twitter.com/ZxtF8XhuHn
— Stanford College Republicans (@Stanford_GOP) May 18, 2021
While at Stanford from 2016-2020, Wilder was a leader in Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, an organization with ties to Hamas affiliates, and which is notorious for inflicting acts of intimidation and violence against pro-Israel students.
— Stanford College Republicans (@Stanford_GOP) May 18, 2021
In 2017, she was the ringleader of a “Return the Birthright” rally in NYC in December 2017, denying the Jewish people of their own right to self-determination. pic.twitter.com/admDQoiI3p
— Stanford College Republicans (@Stanford_GOP) May 18, 2021
.@vv1lder also promoted the blood libel that Jews “ethnically cleansed” Palestinians from the land of Judea and Sumeria. In August of 2018, she defended the violent threats of Hamzeh Daoud, a Stanford residential student who threatened to “physically fight Zionists on campus.” pic.twitter.com/wKLzlzeMIG
— Stanford College Republicans (@Stanford_GOP) May 18, 2021
When our club hosted @benshapiro in November 2019, current Associated Press employee @vv1lder penned an op-ed in the @StanfordDaily referring to Ben Shapiro as a “little turd.” https://t.co/RNg4gewtPr pic.twitter.com/cZlmlWCrOH
— Stanford College Republicans (@Stanford_GOP) May 18, 2021
Mediaite reached out to Wilder for comment, but did not receive a response.
UPDATE [9:45 PM ET]:
It may have been more recent social media posts that brought an end to Wilder’s employment with the AP. A second representative from the AP reached out to Mediaite to say, “We can confirm Emily Wilder’s comments on Thursday that she was dismissed for violations of AP’s social media policy during her time at AP.”
The representative did not respond to a follow-up asking which comments he was referring to, but they may allude to an interview Wilder gave to SFGate published late Thursday.
“They told me that I violated their social media policy and would be terminated immediately, but they never said which tweet or post violated the policy,” she said.
Wilder said she asked to be told which posts violated the policy, but the company declined.
“There’s no question I was just canceled,” she said.
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