Iran Press/ Middle East: The Associated Press is being criticized for firing Emily Wilder while many suggesting the news agency bowed to a political pressure campaign over her pro-Palestinian views from when she was in college.
Wilder, 22, had started at the AP on May 3 as a news associate for the Western U.S., based in Phoenix. On Wednesday, just over two weeks later, the AP informed her that she was being terminated for violations of its social media policy that took place after she became an employee.
AP spokeswoman Lauren Easton would not say what Wilder had written that violated the policy. Wilder said she wasn't given specifics.
Her Twitter feed since joining the AP contains a few retweets that appear sympathetic to Palestinians in the current Gaza conflict, including a video clip of demonstrators chanting, "Free, free Palestine!''
On Sunday, she tweeted: "objectivity' feels fickle when the basic terms we use to report news implicitly take a claim. using 'Israel but never 'Palestine,' or 'war' but not 'siege and occupation' are political choices - yet media make those exact choices all the time without being flagged as biased.''
On Monday, two days before her firing, a Twitter post from Stanford Republicans had criticized Wilder, who is Jewish, as an "anti-Israel agitator'' while on campus.
As for the news organization's use of terminology, the AP Stylebook urges against references to ``Palestine'' because doesn't recognize it as a fully independent and unified state.
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