Senior editors at the Washington Post are reviewing a prominent tech columnist’s private story on social media, which appears to label President Biden a “war criminal” in a photo.

The Post’s Taylor Lorenz attended a White House event for digital influencers on Wednesday. In the photo she shared with a circle of friends on Instagram, Biden appears over her shoulder; the damning caption rests just below him, accompanied by a text frowny face.

After the New York Post’s Jon Levine — a frequent critic of hers — revealed the Instagram photo caption yesterday in a tweet, Lorenz wrote back at him: “You people will fall for any dumbass edit someone makes.”

A fact-check appended to Levine’s tweet cited her apparent denial. (The contextual note to the tweet says, “Taylor Lorenz says this is a digital manipulation which has added a false caption.”) Lorenz told her editors that someone else had added the caption to the photo.

NPR has obtained a screengrab of Lorenz’s actual post, which contained that caption. It was not shared with her wider Instagram audience of 143,000 followers.

Four people with direct knowledge of the private Instagram story confirmed its authenticity to NPR. They spoke to NPR on condition they not be identified due to the professional sensitivity of the situation for Lorenz.

“Our executive editor and senior editors take alleged violations of our standards seriously,” a spokesperson for the newspaper told NPR. “We’re aware of the alleged post and are looking into it.” Lorenz declined to comment.

Lorenz removes the picture from her private chat

About an hour after originally circulating it, Lorenz removed the picture with the “war criminal” caption from her private Instagram chat and publicly posted the same picture on social media – this time, with no such caption.

Some pro-Palestinian protesters have sought to tag Biden with the label “war criminal” for the deaths in Gaza caused by Israel, an American ally. The context of Lorenz’s posting, however, is not entirely clear; the phrasing and images — including a frowny face made with a colon and open parenthesis 🙁 — closely tracks an online meme.

Lorenz has since told associates that a close friend took her posted picture and superimposed the caption upon it, as a joke, and that she shared it with the group on the private Instagram posting.

Lorenz has not been otherwise vocal about the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Lorenz covers digital culture for the Post and is herself fully immersed in it. She has won mass acclaim, showing up on “best of” lists. Her book Extremely Online was a national bestseller last year.

She previously wrote for the Daily Beast, Business Insider, the Atlantic magazine and then The New York Times.

Controversy in real life and online

Lorenz has also courted controversy, online, in print, and in real life.

During the peak of the pandemic, and since its ebb, she has inspired mockery from conservatives over her insistence on wearing masks, even outdoors. She has cited autoimmune issues as the reason.

On leaving the Times two years ago, Lorenz told Vanity Fair that she had hoped that paper would “evolve in their ways” in regard to digital culture and social media.

Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger and Executive Editor Joseph Kahn have called for an emphasis on journalistic independence and have urged staffers to shun online posting with ideological leanings or snark.

Though Lorenz writes many news articles, the Post has designated her a columnist, giving her more leeway in print and online.

Yet the Post itself has a tradition of reining in its journalists’ public social media remarks. In 2022, the Post fired reporter Felicia Sonmez for insubordination over her tweets about treatment of female journalists and suspended reporter Dave Weigel for relaying a joke seen as sexist. He left the paper several months later.

LOS ANGELES — Peter Marshall, the actor and singer turned game show host who played straight man to the stars for 16 years on “The Hollywood Squares,” has died. He was 98.

He died Thursday of kidney failure at his home in the Encino neighborhood of Los Angeles, publicist Harlan Boll said.

Marshall helped define the form of the smooth, professional, but never-too-serious modern game show host on more than 5,000 episodes of the series that ran on NBC from 1966 to 1981.

But he was often closer to a talk show host, and the tic-tac-toe game the contestants played, while real, was all an excuse for a good time. The questions Marshall posed to regulars like Paul Lynde, George Gobel and Joan Rivers were designed to be set-ups for joke answers before the real ones followed.

“It was the easiest thing I’ve ever done in show business,” Marshall said in a 2010 interview for the Archive of American Television. “I walked in, said ‘Hello stars,’ I read questions and laughed. And it paid very well.”

“The Hollywood Squares” would become an American cultural institution and make Marshall a household name. It would win four Daytime Emmys for outstanding game show during his run and spawned dozens of international versions and several U.S. reboots. Not only was it a forum for such character actors as Charlie Weaver (the stage name of Cliff Arquette) and Wally Cox, but the show attracted a range of top stars as occasional guests, including Aretha Franklin, Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Ed Asner and Janet Leigh.

Marshall had a warm rapport with Weaver, Lynde and others, but said that Gobel, the wry comedian, actor and variety show host, held a special place, tweeting in 2021 that it’s “no secret he was my closest friend on Hollywood Squares and my absolute all-time favorite Square!”

Marshall had lived nearly an entire show business life before he took the “Squares” podium at age 40.

“I am a singer first I am not a game show host”

He had toured with big bands starting as a teenager, had been a part of two comedy teams that appeared in nightclubs and on television, appeared in movies as a contract player for Twentieth Century Fox, and had sung in several Broadway musicals when the opportunity came up after Bert Parks, who hosted the pilot, bowed out.

“I am a singer first I am not a game show host,” Marshall told his hometown paper, the Herald-Dispatch of Huntington, West Virginia in 2013, “that was just a freak opportunity. I had been on Broadway with Julie Harris and was going back to Broadway when I did the audition, and I thought it was a few weeks but that turned into 16 years.”

“The Hollywood Squares” was more strait-laced when it began, but early in its run a producer suggested they write jokes for Lynde, the ever-snarky comic actor who occupied the center square and would become as identified as Marshall with the show.

The first joke would set the template for the years that followed:

Marshall: “Paul, why do motorcyclists wear leather?”

Lynde: “Because chiffon wrinkles.”

“That changed the whole thing,” Marshall told the TV archive. “I had been a straight man. So working with comics was easy for me.”

From West Virginia to Broadway

Born Ralph Pierre LaCock in Clarksburg, West Virginia, Marshall would move around the state as a child, living in Wheeling and Huntington.

His father died when Marshall was 10, and he would live with his grandparents as his mother and sister, the actress Joanne Dru, moved to New York to pursue her career in show business. Marshall would soon join them.

At 15, he toured as a singer with the Bob Chester Orchestra. He also worked as an NBC Radio page and an usher at the Paramount Theater. He was drafted during World War II and stationed in Italy, where he made his first forays onto the airways as a DJ for Armed Forces Radio. In 1949 he formed a comedy duo with Tommy Noonan, appearing in nightclubs, in theaters and on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

He became a movie contract player in the 1950s at Twentieth Century Fox, appearing in films including 1959’s “The Rookie” and 1961’s “Swingin’ Along.”

Major starring roles eluded him in Hollywood, but he would find them in musical theater.

He starred opposite Chita Rivera in “Bye Bye Birdie” in London’s West End in 1962 — Lynde had played a major role in the Broadway version that he would reprise in the film — and played his first starring role on Broadway in “Skyscraper” with Julie Harris in 1965.

He would also appear in Broadway versions of “High Button Shoes,” “The Music Man” and “42nd Street.”

After “The Hollywood Squares,” Marshall would host a few other short-lived game shows, but mostly resumed his career as a singing actor, starring in more than 800 performances of “La Cage Aux Folles” on Broadway and on tour, and singing in the 1983 film version of “Annie.”

He was married three times, the last to Laurie Stewart in 1989.

The couple survived a bout with COVID-19 early in 2021. He was hospitalized for several weeks.

His four kids include son Pete LaCock, a professional baseball player for the Chicago Cubs and Kansas City Royals. Marshall is also survived by daughters Suzanne and Jaime, son David, 12 grandchildren, and nine great-great grandchildren.

In Awkwafina’s new movie “Jackpot!” (co-starring John Cena and Simu Liu and directed by Paul Feig; it’s now streaming on Prime Video), the rapper and comedian plays an aspiring actor turned winner of a multi-billion dollar lottery ticket. So when we recently sat down for a Zoom interview about her ideal Sunday, one of the things we talked about was how her perfect weekend might change if she actually won that kind of cash in real life.

In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.

“If I struck the jackpot, I think I would just rent out all those places people usually have to wait in line for — the ones with the lines out the door — just to be annoying,” she said. “Places like Cinespia and Pine & Crane…. And I’d rent Crypto.com Arena and just take to the floor in there and maybe rollerblade around. No, I am not a rollerblader, but I would take it up.”

Until she wins a “Jackpot!”-level lottery, though, her best Sunday ever will look a lot less like a roller derby of one — and a lot more like the one she sketched out below.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.

11 a.m.: Start with a smoothie
If it’s my ideal Sunday, I’d be getting up at 10 or 11 [a.m.] — maybe noon if I’m feeling frisky. And the first thing I’d do is go to Jayde’s Market, which is at the Beverly Glen Center in my neighborhood, and I’d get this great smoothie that they have, the [Green & Glowing] one. And maybe a breakfast burrito.

Noon: Motor east to Mohawk General Store
After that, it’s about getting in my car and heading east. I love my neighborhood, but a lot of my friends live on the East Side. Maybe I’d hit Westfield Century City along the way. Century City is my favorite mall — and I bring my dog there sometimes — and then stop by some shops like American Rag [on South La Brea Avenue] or Mohawk General Store in Silver Lake, which is kind of like American Rag but smaller.

1:30 p.m.: A French omelet at Figaro Bistrot
Since I’m over on the East Side, I’d probably make my way to Figaro Bistrot. I like Figaro a lot; it’s this little French cafe, and there are always a ton of people outside all the time. I’d get a glass of wine and maybe an omelet. They make this really good French omelet and serve it with a side salad. I also like this place called Superba.

3:30 p.m.: Hop over to the Los Feliz Flea
After that, I’d probably go to Edendale — just for the ambiance, to be honest — I’ve never eaten there, but I just like to hang out there with my friends. And I sometimes go to the Los Feliz flea market, which recently moved to a new location. I really like [Ads Have Souls]. That’s the booth that has all the framed [vintage magazine art] of cars and things like that. I love that guy and have a couple of his things. I bring them mostly to New York because they’re a little less recognizable there. I have this really awesome framed picture of [Leslie Nielsen] from [“Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult”], the one where he’s pregnant. That’s pretty sick.

5:00 p.m.: Focus on finding furniture
I really like furniture stores and have been trying to check out different ones here and there. So at this point, I’m probably wandering around looking for furniture.

6:30 p.m. Catch dinner in K-town
I think I would end my night in Koreatown, maybe at Hibi. I usually don’t even order [when I go] there. They just bring it out, and it’s all amazing. It was started by a friend, and they just got added to the Michelin Guide last year, so they’re doing really great. But it’s a smaller place that’s harder to get in. So if I couldn’t get in, I would go to a place called Olivia, which is also in Koreatown. They’re all-vegetarian and they do these fried oyster mushrooms and have really good pizza. I like an early dinner, so I’d do that around 6 or 6:30 p.m.

8 p.m.: Kick it in the karaoke lounge
Afterward, I’d head to [the members-only club] Duckbill — it’s in the same building as the restaurant Intercrew in K-town — to do karaoke. I do karaoke all the time. I have a karaoke room in my house that I rehearse in for karaoke. I am obsessed. My go-to songs? I like “Chop Suey!” by System of a Down or “Hey Ma” by Cam’ron or “Take It Easy” by the Eagles. “Walkin’ After Midnight” [by Patsy Cline] is another good karaoke song. The best karaoke song, though, is “Under the Bridge” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers because it’s in everyone’s vocal range.

10 p.m.: Spend the night with “90 Days”
If I was working on Monday, I’d probably try to go home early and watch TV. I like re-watching things a lot and right now I’m watching all the different “90 Day Fiancé” [reality TV shows] and the one that I think is airing right now is the one with the guy named Gino [Palazzolo] called “90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After?” I love that, so I’d probably be watching TV until the wee hours of the night.

12 a.m.: Lunchables and lights out
Lights out would probably be around midnight or 1 a.m., and I’ve been eating Lunchables at night lately for some reason. So I’d have a Lunchables snack.