Piers Morgan

Morgan expresses rejection: he calls the announcement a very bad decision, says the media's job is to hold the administration to rigorous account, and says banning them is a suppression of free speech and unconstitutional, with a screenshot of the announcement attached to the post. The closest competing label is “Challenged the characterization”, because part of the post is about what the media's job is; that loses because the post goes on to criticize the exclusion itself as unconstitutional rather than only disputing a description of it.

The case concerns Macklemore's Free Palestine speech at Ed Sheeran's concerts and his removal from the remaining U.S. dates. Morgan says the words were not controversial and that Kraft applied a double standard. He also calls the speech a deliberate stunt, but on the speech itself he sides with Macklemore, so we labeled it as defending the speech.

The reference point is Israeli fire on October 7, 2023, under or in the manner of the Hannibal Directive, that put Israeli captives at risk of being killed by Israeli forces. Morgan now accepts that the story has merit without saying how often the directive was applied or how many it killed, after disputing it in 2024. The closest competing label is Condemned, but he gives no assessment of the conduct beyond accepting the story.

The reference point is Israeli fire on October 7, 2023, under or in the manner of the Hannibal Directive, that put Israeli captives at risk of being killed by Israeli forces. Morgan accepts that the order may have been issued but disputes claims that hundreds were killed by Israeli fire, which challenges the characterization. The closest competing label is Minimized, but he treats any deaths as unproven rather than downplaying accepted ones.