At the Washington Post, Erik Wemple reports that the Knight Foundation defended its decision to pay journalistic fraud Jonah Lehrer $20,000 to deliver a speech.
Alberto Ibargüen, the foundation’s president, tells the Erik Wemple Blog that there wasn’t a lot of dissension among decision-makers about the Lehrer speaking budget. … “I was happy with it, because people stayed riveted, people were discussing both the speech, the emotion of it, the Twitter feed that played right with it. And then, 15, 20, 30 minutes, later pockets of people were still standing around discussing it.”
It looks like they didn't really think through what they were doing:
“I think his speech turned out to be significantly more about himself than I had expected,” says Ibargüen.
I mean, just look at that. Just think for a moment about how completely clueless that man is.
Previously: Knight Foundation pays $20,000 to Jonah Lehrer for speech about his lies
Update: The foundation now writes that paying Lehrer to speak "was a mistake".
