Kerby Anderson
Perhaps you have heard of the white high school principal in Baltimore who was removed from his position for allegedly making racist and antisemitic comments. I say “allegedly” since he didn’t make any of those comments. The audio was an AI-generated attempt to mimic his voice so that the school’s former black athletic director could get him fired.
As one commentator quipped, “Jessie Smollett must be devastated he didn’t think of this first!” Anyone who wants to perpetrate a fake hate crime or ruin the reputation of someone they hate only needs to use AI to accomplish the task.
The clip was posted to a popular Instagram account in the Baltimore community. This prompted an investigation from school officials and the police department. It was also sent to three teachers. One of them forwarded the email with the phony audio clip to the media and to the NAACP. She also forwarded it to a student who she knew would spread the message around to various social media outlets and throughout the school.
You can imagine the results and the amount of grief that came down on the head of the high school principal. I have likened spreading gossip on social media to opening a down pillow in the wind. You will never get the feathers back into the pillow.
I have written many radio commentaries about fake hate crimes over the last 14 years of doing these commentaries. This is a first, but it will not be the last. As one commentator put it, “hate hoaxers are using AI. It was bound to come to this.”
My message to media is not to be so trusting of an audio or video clip. You need to be more skeptical. At the very least, report your story with a disclaimer that you haven’t checked the veracity of the clip.
My message to you is simple: don’t trust everything you see or hear.

Kerby Anderson
The Pro-Hamas campus protests could only last so long before some people in charge exercised some common sense. One of my cliches on radio is “common sense is breaking out all over.” We are seeing that in the words and actions of people who understand what is happening.
Even at Columbia University, police were called and arrested 108 protesters last month, but not much has happened. The President at the University of Texas at Austin took stronger action and was criticized by the faculty. But presidents and university administrators are starting to realize they cannot continue to function with these protests on campus. Classes have gone online, and graduations have been cancelled.
Bill Maher on his TV show encouraged the protesters to start protesting truly evil groups like: Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. He also wondered why they weren’t protesting North Korea, China, and Myanmar.
On radio, I’ve questioned why there has been no protest about other Muslims being killed. These students never protested when Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad used poison gas against his own people. They have not been in the streets when Muslims in Sudan kill millions in an endless civil war. Boko Haram kidnaps whole villages of women, and yet we had a short protest ten years ago and but nothing since.
Common sense seems to be breaking out in the corporate world. Google recently fired 28 employees who were protesting the company’s cloud-computing contract with Israel. According to the company’s vice president, the employees “took over office spaces, defaced our property and physically impeded the work of other Googlers.” They were all shown the door.
We need more people in charge to exercise common sense. And we need to tell the protesting students they are focused on the wrong cause.