Time magazine reporter’s Wikileaks tweet sparks outrage

The senior national correspondent for the magazine, Michael Grunwald, deleted his tweet about wanting to kill Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. The magazine has since apologized.

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Time magazine is facing down demands that it fire one of its senior writers over a tweet, but as of now, it seems to be looking to simply apologize and move on.

The magazine’s senior national correspondent, Michael Grunwald, tweeted this message about Wikileaks founder Julian Assange Saturday afternoon:

Within about two hours, Grunwald deleted the message and apologized for what he called his “dumb tweet.”

It was a dumb tweet. I’m sorry. I deserve the backlash. (Maybe not the anti-Semitic stuff but otherwise I asked for it.)

— Michael Grunwald (@MikeGrunwald) August 18, 2013

Grunwald has written opinion columns in support of drones and gun control, but quite a few Twitter users, particularly those associated with Wikileaks and the Occupy movement, thought Grunwald’s tweet went well beyond editorializing. Some of the criticism came from other journalists:

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