The New York Times quickly removed a Sunday tweet that was critical of Kathy Boudin’s death, and replaced it with more gentle language. “Kathy Boudin was a member the Weather Underground and took part in the 1981 murderous holdup of an armored Brink’s truck. She died on Sunday.” According to the tweet, she was 78.”
The tweet was quickly deleted and replaced by kinder words for the convict, who has spent decades in prison after a 1981 truck theft that resulted in the deaths of two police officers as well as a security guard.
“Kathy Boudin was a Weather Underground member who was imprisoned for her involvement in a fatal Robbery, but she later helped former inmates,” reads the latest tweet.
Twitter users quickly criticized the Times’s change in language.
“Why did your tweet that softened Kathy Boudin’s involvement in a terrorist attack be deleted?” She pretended to be scared and pleaded with officers to lower their weapons, so her comrades would burst out of the truck to kill them,” Andy Ngo, an independent journalist wrote.
Alberto Miguel Fernandez, a European Conservative contributor, joked that Boudin was a leftist revolutionary terrorist from America.
“Notorious domestic terrorist who was responsible for the most notorious crime in the history of my hometown.” On June 7, her son will face a recall election for San Francisco DA. The initial NYT tweet was, apparently,” National Review Senior Writer Dan McLaughlin tweeted.
Boudin was sentenced to 22 years for her part in the heist, and was paroled in 2003.
Columbia University’s 2008 announcement that Boudin was an adjunct professor in its school of social work made Boudin the most prominent news media personality. According to the New York Post, she was hired by Columbia University as a full-time professor.
It is not the first instance of liberal media outlets using soft language to describe the deaths people most well-known for their violent acts. The Washington Post was criticised in 2019 for calling Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the former leader of Islamic State, an “austere religious scholar”. Later, the headline was changed to refer to him as an “extremist leader”.
