The Twitter reaction over the New York Times’ Elizabeth Holmes profile, explained

The New York Times is facing some backlash over a profile it published on the Theranos founder and convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes.

“I was admittedly swept up in Liz as an authentic and sympathetic person. She’s gentle and charismatic, in a quiet way,” New York Times reporter Amy Chozick wrote in the Sunday profile, “Liz Holmes wants you to forget about Elizabeth.”

“If you are in her presence, it is impossible not to believe her, not to be taken with her and be taken in by her,” Chozick added.

The piece briefly covered Holmes’ decadeslong Theranos scheme and closely-followed trial (Holmes was convicted of criminal fraud charges in 2022). But Chozick focused on Holmes’ new persona — “Liz.”

Holmes dropped out of Stanford University in 2004 to launch her tech company Theranos. As a young woman, Holmes convinced dozens of investors to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into a device she claimed could successfully perform dozens of complicated blood tests with only a pin-prick of blood, per the Deseret News.

“I made so many mistakes and there was so much I didn’t know and understand,” Holmes told The New York Times.

In 2016, inspectors from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services discovered “deficient practices” within a Theranos Lab that posed “immediate jeopardy to patient health and safety,” per The New York Times. By 2018, Theranos shut down all operations. Holmes faces a sentence of 11 years in prison.

One of the critics of the piece was reporter Scott Budman, who wrote on Twitter: “As a reporter who covered both Theranos and the entire Elizabeth Holmes trial, the last line of The New York Times story is wrong. It is possible to be in her presence and not completely believe her. Questioning is what we do for a living.”

Here’s a sampling of the reactions.