To the Upworthy community:
On Thursday, June 30, we shared a video from our “Testimony” series, featuring a personal story from Noura Erakat, a professor at George Mason University and the daughter of Palestinian immigrants.
When we filmed with her, Ms. Erakat told a story of what inspired her activism. However, in the version of the story that we published, a key element of Ms. Erakat’s experience was not included: She told the story to illustrate how a first at-home protest lent her the framework to understand larger issues of oppression in Palestine.
This is a screenshot from the video in question. We have since removed it from our site and social media feeds.
The intention of this series is to tell the featured subject’s story. In this case, that did not happen, and that was a mistake.
Upworthy had no intention to skew or misrepresent Ms. Erakat’s experience by publishing this less-complete version of her story. The moment we learned about Ms. Erakat’s concerns, we moved quickly to contact her and listen to those concerns. We then made the decision to remove the video from our site and social media accounts and post this retraction.
It’s important to Upworthy that our stories are an honest and accurate reflection of the people who are featured in them. Upworthy believes in truthful representations of a diverse range of experiences in all our storytelling, and upon further review, this particular video could have done better. We apologize to both Ms. Erakat and our wider community for our error.
We also have included a link to a screenshot of the full write-up of the story for transparency.
We appreciate the many members of our community who wrote to us, commented, and shared their concerns about this video.
We are listening and examining our processes, and we pledge to do better going forward.
Sincerely,
Croi McNamara, Head of Video at Upworthy
