The far-left Mediaite launched a newsletter called One Sheet a few months back, and already its editor, Colby Hall, has been suspended for fabricated quotes and a series of misattributions.
In its January 21 launch announcement, One Sheet described itself as “The Newsletter of Newsletters” and promised that for a monthly fee, “Mediaite’s team of media-savvy writers and editors will sift through the dozens of media newsletters and curate all of the day’s best content in easily-digestible fashion.”
Oh, and the newsletter comes “complete with insider knowledge and smart takes,” which, when you consider the awful writing and shallow, herd-like thinking Mediaite is famous for, sounds more like a threat.
Then came the real threat…
“One Sheet will be led by Mediaite Founding Editor Colby Hall [who] will be bringing his unique brand of thoughtful, intelligent, pulls-no-punches analysis to a platform that couldn’t fit him more perfectly.”
One Sheet and Mediaite would be in much better shape today had everyone been honest up front: For a monthly fee, One Sheet will make shit up and get things wrong.
Because as of today, Colby Hall has been suspended for a “series of mishaps… including misattributed information and made-up quotes,” reports the far-left Semafor.
Made-up quotes.
Wow.
While attempting to explain himself to Semafor, Hall brought up A.I, which made it sound, at least to me, as though that was part of the problem.
“Like many editors, I use AI in a limited way as part of my editorial workflow — primarily as a copy and organizational aid,” Hall said. “Unfortunately, we’ve made mistakes that are easy to jump on.”
But when announcing Hall’s suspension on Tuesday, Mediaite editor-in-chief Joe DePaolo appeared to go out of his way to debunk the AI excuse.
“We presented the findings to Colby Hall, who insists the errors were purely a result of sloppiness in how he aggregated and categorized information, not from the use of AI,” DePaolo wrote. “Regardless, it is completely unacceptable and Colby has been suspended from Mediaite pending further investigation.”
On Monday, the far-left media outlet Status told Semafor that One Sheet “appeared to outright fabricate a quote and attribute it to our very own Jon Passantino, putting us on heavy blast on its website and newsletter for something we never did.”
Semafor further reports that since its launch, One Sheet has serially misattributed quotes to the wrong people and outlets, including CNN, Fox News, Status, and Politico. In other words, those dumb enough to pay for One Sheet were misinformed about who said what. Hell, I can’t imagine anyone dumb enough to read Mediaite for free.
Those of us in this business need to be a little humble when this happens. Heaven knows, I’ve made mistakes. Fabricating quotes, though? No. And if you discover that your process results in misattributions, a responsible editor would immediately 1) fix that process and 2) triple-check all attributions before hitting “send.”
As far as Colby Hall, he’s house-trained to push the required narratives with the approved opinions. He long ago proved his undying fealty to the corrupt media and Democrat Party. He’s a good boy. He’ll be back.