The New York Post employee who was fired after publishing a slew of phony, sexist and racist headlines on the newspaper’s website and Twitter account has apologized for what he described as a tantrum and the “utmost betrayal”.
“I let my own stupidity get the best of me,” Miguel Gonzalez told the Daily Beast’s Confider newsletter in a piece published late on Monday. “I deserved to get fired for a very volatile, irresponsible and disgusting action and an utmost betrayal of the New York Post.
“I disrespected them … [and] it’s my responsibility to now apologize.”
In the interview, the 25-year-old Gonzalez admitted using his login credentials as a digital producer at the Post to access the tabloid’s website and publish fake articles discussing how the New York Republican gubernatorial challenger Lee Zeldin had promised to force himself on the Democratic incumbent, Kathy Hochul – and how Texas’s far-right governor, Greg Abbott, had told border patrol agents to kill undocumented immigrants.
Meanwhile, working from his home in New Jersey, Gonzalez also commandeered the Post’s Twitter feed and posted links to fabricated pieces containing racist comments about New York City’s Black mayor, Eric Adams, and calling for the assassinations of Joe Biden, the president’s son Hunter Biden and the progressive congresswoman Alexandia Ocasio-Cortez.
Despite the material centering on politicians, Gonzalez insisted he had no political motive. Instead, he said he was just acting out emotionally in response to personal life troubles before the Post removed the pieces, identified him as the hacker and gave him his walking papers.
“What I did was horrible,” Gonzalez said. “It was my mistake, and I owe a lot of apologies.”
He said he hoped to continue his career in journalism and since his dismissal had already applied for openings at outlets such as Gothamist and New York Public Radio. But he said he wouldn’t be surprised if he were “blacklisted everywhere” as he seeks a new job.
Gonzalez had arrived at the New York Post in 2019 for what had been his first job in journalism after finishing college. He told the Daily Beast newsletter that he built stories and inserted photos into them for the tabloid’s website during shifts so grueling he would have to answer his bosses’ Slack messages in the bathroom.
Gonzalez said his work logins made it relatively easy to publish the pieces that led to his termination. Those posts appeared under the handle “Thrax”.
After regaining control of its compromised digital properties on Friday and removing the inflammatory screeds, the New York Post issued statements blaming everything on “unauthorized conduct” by an employee who had been terminated. But the outlet did not name the fired worker before Gonzalez chose to speak out.
Media consumers across the country, including some of those who had been picked on by the phony pieces, excoriated the New York Post despite its explanations for what had happened.
For instance, some readers taunted the Post that the fake articles did not make them suspect the paper might have been hacked, because it is not unusual for the tabloid to write glowingly of Republican politicians while putting down both Democrats and immigrants.
The pugnacious rightwing media baron Rupert Murdoch has owned the New York Post since 1993.