On Friday afternoon, the day before Oklahoma Democrats were set to meet in Broken Arrow for their annual state convention, an anonymous mass text was sent to about 100 party members, delegates, and benefactors with a shocking surprise.
Apparently, someone had obtained audio of State Rep. John Waldron—the granola-eater who was running to serve as the party’s new chairman—saying racially insensitive things about two prominent Black Oklahoma Democrats: outgoing party chair Alicia Andrews and newly minted Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols.
Check this out:
Yikes! That’s pretty awful! Can you believe a Democratic leader would ever say things that sound so… Republican? Who does this guy think he is? Jason Dunnington?!
The audio of Waldron sounding like a guy who thinks Jordan Peterson has some good ideas was quickly sent to muckrakers at Tulsa’s Black Wall Street Times.
Before you could say, “Hmm, maybe we should investigate this a little bit further,” they fired off an article about the recording:
Yep. Breaking news! The Black Wall Street Times acquired audio of State Rep. John Waldron saying Black Tulsans lacked “qualified leadership.” Scandal! Outrage! Controversy!
Except, well, they technically didn’t.
It turns out the audio clip was fake. It was an AI-generated voice of John Waldron created by some rambunctious rabble-rouser on the internet in about 10 minutes.
In a rare moment of reverse journalism, Waldron apparently reached out to the Black Wall Street Times after their story dropped and informed them of this technicality. Before you could say, “Dear God, I hope we don’t get sued for this,” they quickly issued a hurried retraction:
Maybe I’m simply relieved it happened to them and not me, but I’m not going to fault the Black Wall Street Times too much here!
Sure, it’s silly and irresponsible in today's AI-driven age not to verify that the voice was actually Waldron’s, but let’s be honest—the benefit of being first in these situations – and getting all the pageviews, engagement, and notoriety that come with it – far outweighs the cost of being wrong.
Well, that is unless you’re The Oklahoman and—while your reporters day-drink wine at home—you accidentally out the wrong guy as a racist. Then it can be very expensive.
Plus, let’s be honest – the voice sounded like John Waldron, and he’s not exactly a well-known guy, or the type of dude you’d expect to be targeted by a fake AI misinformation campaign, so I can understand how the publication let its guard down.
Anyway, I guess the next question is – which loser is behind the smear campaign?
I have no clue who it is, but I would assume they A) work in Democratic politics and B) would be pretty easy to find, because let’s be honest—there are only a couple dozen people out there who care enough about the Oklahoma Democratic Party to try and sabotage their elections with misinformation.
Either way, their campaign was unsuccessful.
Waldron was not only voted the new state party leader on Sunday, but not he gets to weat the AI misinformation victim badge, and further endear himself to party voters by issuing statements like this:
“As a former history teacher, I see this as a learning opportunity on the perils of politics in an age of AI. I am very grateful to The Black Wall Street Times for retracting this false story. This only shows that we need to work harder to build a truly transparent and unified culture in the Oklahoma Democratic Party,” Rep. John Waldron told The Black Wall Street Times.
We’ll continue to follow the story and let you know if we have any updates or retractions.
Stay with The Lost Ogle. We’ll keep you advised.
