Last week, Newsweek published a story with a misleading headline about Dennis Prager, a conservative radio host and founder of the non-profit Prager University, disagreeing with Anne Frank that people are inherently good. The publication changed the headline and the article after Prager blasted it for the reporting.
INSTEAD OF CENSORSHIP: Our Free Speech Zone below is divided into Civil, Spirited and Extreme labels, so users can decide what they’re comfortable with seeing.
The initial headline from Newsweek read: “Conservative Radio Host Ridicules Anne Frank: ‘I Don’t Get My Wisdom From Teenagers.”
“Conservative radio host Dennis Prager dismissed Anne Frank as immature after being asked to respond to her diary quote about believing people are ‘really good at heart,'” Benjamin Fearnow, a deputy editor at Newsweek, wrote. “Prager, who is also the founder of the influential non-profit Prager University, offered a cold response on his “Fireside Chat” this week to a listener question that asked for his opinion on a quote from the German-born Dutch diarist who died in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II.”
The original version is no longer available on Newsweek’s site. We found it here.
Prager slammed the publication for how they portrayed his comments, citing Newsweek’s article as one of the examples why people are less trustful of the mainstream media and are more prone to label it as “fake news.”
“Well, it turns out the ‘conservative radio host’ was me. Yes, me — a religious Jew who has devoted much of his life to the welfare of the Jewish people, served on the board of the U.S. Holocaust Museum, made the most widely viewed pro-Israel video in the world, written a book on anti-Semitism that is in its third printing, and founded a synagogue and a Jewish day school,” he writes in a piece for American Greatness.
“Only someone who deliberately seeks to smear someone would claim that what I said ridicules Anne Frank,” he adds.
Read the full piece here.
LaCorte News. We’re a news site that won’t make you dumber
What did he say? During an episode of PragerU’s podcast “The Fireside Chat” on Dec. 13. a listener asked him: “On your most recent Fireside Chat, you said that people are not basically good. We’ve heard you discuss this topic before. Anne Frank is quoted as saying, ‘Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart.’ How do you respond to her quote?”
“She wrote that in her diary, the most famous Holocaust document. A teenage girl, a Dutch Jewish girl, who hid with her family until they were betrayed by someone to the Nazis, who then shipped them to death camps. And she died, murdered by the Nazis in the death camps. She was about 16 years old, maybe 15. Her diary is very famous. It gives a face to the horror of the Holocaust,” Prager began.
“I know she wrote that, and my answer is it doesn’t matter that she wrote it. I don’t get my wisdom from teenagers. That she was a wonderful young woman and wrote an unbelievably powerful document that will last forever is beside the point. I don’t expect 16-year-olds unless they grew up in a religious Jewish or Christian home,” he said, clarifying in his piece “where it is taught as basic religious doctrine that people are not born basically good.”
“She was a secular Jew. Most kids believe that. But it is not true. So, it has never been an issue for me — ’Well, you disagree with Anne Frank.’ So what? And, by the way, to be very serious for a moment, I would be very curious— I’ve thought about this a lot — if I were to be able to visit Anne Frank while in a concentration camp, would she have still believed that? We don’t know.”
Newsweek’s headline and article have since been changed. The headline now reads: “Conservative radio host counters Anne Frank’s view that people are “good at heart.”
“Conservative radio host Dennis Prager disagrees with Anne Frank’s view that, as she wrote in her diary, people are ‘really good at heart,'” the article begins. “Prager, who is also the founder of the influential non-profit Prager University, responded on his “Fireside Chat” this week to a listener’s question that asked for his opinion on a quote from the teenage, German-born Dutch diarist who died in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II.”
The publication did post an editor’s note saying: “Update 1/8, 4:45 p.m. ET: The original headline on this story misrepresented Prager’s comments; the headline and story have been edited to reflect that Prager did not ‘ridicule’ or ‘mock’ Anne Frank but took issue with her view.”
The second version also doesn’t describe Prager’s response to the listener’s question as “cold.”
We’re a news site for people who don’t trust the news. Check us out daily! You can also find us on Twitter and Youtube.


