Kim Kardashian condemns Wall Street Journal for denying Armenian 'genocide' in New York Times advert
'Advocating the denial of a genocide by the country responsible for it - that’s not publishing a ‘provocative viewpoint’ that’s spreading lies,' says the reality TV star
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Your support makes all the difference.An indignant letter penned by Kim Kardashian-West highlighting the atrocity of the mass killings of Armenians has been included in a full-page advert in The New York Times.
The reality TV star, who is of Armenian descent, published the letter in direct response to The Wall Street Journal’s decision to run an advertisement from a group of Armenian genocide deniers. She rebuked the paper for selecting an ad by Fact Check Armenia who effectively deny the killing of 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman government in 1915 constitutes a genocide.
The Armenian Educational Foundation has now decided to take out a full-page ad in The New York Times featuring the letter - which was initially published on her app five months ago. Kardashian-West retweeted an image of the advert on Sunday.
“Money talks and right now it’s talking crap,” Kardashian-West writes in the letter titled "Genocide Denial Cannot Be Allowed". “My family and I are no strangers to BS in the press. We’ve learned to brush it off.”
“For the Wall Street Journal to publish something like this is reckless, upsetting and dangerous,” she added. “It’s one thing when a crappy tabloid profits from a made-up scandal, but for a trusted publication like WSJ to profit from genocide - it’s shameful and unacceptable.”
Kardashian-West said the paper was ethically irresponsible for propagating lies: “Advocating the denial of a genocide by the country responsible for it - that’s not publishing a ‘provocative viewpoint,’ that’s spreading lies”.
“It’s totally morally irresponsible, and, most of all, it’s dangerous. If this had been an ad denying the Holocaust, or pushing some 9/11 conspiracy theory, would it have made it to print?“
The initial ad, which Kardashian-West claims was paid for by the Turkic platform, directed readers to a website called Fact Check Armenia which refutes the view that “the events of 1915 constitute a clear-cut genocide against the Armenian people” and labels efforts of the Armenian diaspora to achieve recognition of the genocide as “propaganda.”
After the ad was published, a spokesperson for Wall Street Journal responded to the criticism it received, telling Gawker: “We accept a wide range of advertisements, including those with provocative viewpoints. While we review ad copy for issues of taste, the varied and divergent views expressed belong to the advertisers.”
The Kardashian family escaped Armenia in 1913 and Kardashian-West has frequently been vocal about the need for the world to recognise the events of 1915 as a genocide. Last year she wrote a piece in TIME urging Barack Obama to label the massacre as a genocide and in April 2015 she went on an eight-day tour of Armenia with her husband Kanye West, her sister Khloe and two Armenian cousins, Kara and Kourtni.
The Armenian Educational Foundation are a non-profit group which offers financial help to Armenian students around the world and helps them pursue higher education. They are a cornerstone of the Armenian educational movement worldwide.
A representative for Kardashian-West did not immediately respond to request for comment.
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