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Update, April 3: BikePortland's Jonathan Maus issued an apology this morning.
Original Post: Advocacy blog BikePortland is in hot water after publisher Jonathan Maus ran a post Monday alleging that an Asian man on an activist ride Sunday was an undercover cop. He wasn't.
In the original post (now reposted in the comments), Maus says that riders on a Veloprovo ride grew suspicious of a man who "had all brand new 'stereotypical biker gear,' didn't speak with anyone and was filming everything," Maus wrote. 'It's worth remembering that the Portland Police has a history of secretly monitoring bicycle-based activism."
He then posted a side-by-side photo of the man at the ride and who they believed the man to be: Portland Police Bureau Capt. Chris Uehara.
"The man in these photos appears to be the same man wearing a PPB uniform and identified as Cpt. Chris Uehara in a Portland Public Schools video from September 2012," Maus wrote.
He later updated to say he got it wrong, and the man on the ride was just a guy interested in activism.
Maus set off a firestorm in the comments section and on Twitter, where Oregonian journalists, including Janie Har and Helen Jung, accused Maus of insensitivity.
Instead of backing down and apologizing, Maus has spent the morning saying he handled the story correctly. He's alternately spent his time pulling down the original post, putting it back up, and telling Jung, Har and other reporters they don't know what they're talking about.
Here's a sample of Maus' day on Twitter:
And finally:
WWeek 2015