Blogger with history of sexism makes ‘erroneous’ Duane Kuiper report

Blogger Rich Lieberman, who has a track of record of sexism and false reporting, reported that longtime SF Giants announcer Duane Kuiper had decided to retire. It appears his report was false.

Shock waves have slowly been going through the SF Giants fan base over the past week following a claim by blogger Rich Lieberman that longtime broadcaster Duane Kuiper planned to retire following the 2023 season. It appears that Lieberman, who has both a long history of sexism and false reporting, has once again spread misinformation with a false report. Kuiper's former teammate and longtime broadcast partner Mike Krukow called the report "BS" in an appearance on "The Murph and Mac Podcast," and The San Francisco Chronicle's Susan Slusser called the report "erroneous" in a tweet, which cited Giants CEO Larry Baer.

There was an erroneous report out there earlier this week that Duane Kuiper is retiring after this season. His contract goes through 2024 and the team expects him to be with them through then “and beyond,” Larry Baer tells me.

— Susan Slusser (@susanslusser) June 2, 2023

UPDATE: On Saturday, Kuiper's son, Cole Kuiper tweeted a direct refutation of Lieberman's report, citing his dad:

I have a confidential, unnamed source that says "I'm not retiring." https://t.co/8gyHvGBgup

— cole kuiper (@cmkuiper) June 3, 2023

Lieberman's original blog post led to a trickle of posts around social media without citation, which understandably generated a growing buzz with many assuming the report had come from a legitimate source. Lieberman made headlines back in 2020 when a group of 29 women who are journalists in the Bay Area penned an open letter specifically calling out Lieberman for a pattern of coverage they described as "often misogynistic, dramatized, and, frankly, perverted."

While Lieberman had been blogging about media for years, the letter was prompted following a retracted story by the San Jose Mercury News, which used Lieberman as its only source in a story. The article claimed that then-president Donald Trump's campaign advisor Kimberly Guilfoyle had skipped a scheduled appearance at KTVU-TV in Oakland due to “major pushback” from employees at the station.

"Since publication, KTVU news director Amber Eikel on Twitter called the story a 'ridiculous lie,' and Guilfoyle spokesman Taylor Budowich has said in an email that the story is 'demonstrably false,'" the Mercury News published in its correction.

CONTENT WARNING: Sexism

To call Lieberman's writing the addlings of a stereotypical middle school boy would be an insult to the capabilities of children. Lieberman is not simply a writer who reifies patriarchy, but he is someone who enjoys publicly objectifying and demeaning women, particularly regarding their physical appearance. His so-called reporting on the media has consistently featured massive volumes of inappropriate and sexualized coverage. In one of his most disturbing posts back in 2019, which has not been deleted, he called one television personality a "washerwoman extraordinaire" and devoted the article to whether she had received breast augmentation surgery.

Lieberman's responses to criticism that his work is blatantly sexist has only further suggested he refuses to see a woman independent of their sexual attractiveness to him.

"I'M SUPPOSED to feel guilty because it's a crime to say I enjoy watching, for the most part, good-looking women anchors on both local and non-local TV and Sports News," he wrote in a 2018 post entitled, "Hey, Don't Call Me a Misogynist Because I Like Looking at Pretty Female TV News Anchors; Lunch Time Crawl."

His 2018 piece also included the strange claim, "a misogynist doesn't open doors for women and buy them expensive shoes when he dated a great woman he met in Atlanta a few years ago," because apparently to Lieberman, buying a gift for a romantic partner absolves someone of sexism. He also routinely cited voting for Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton as evidence that he was not a sexist, which is frankly, an argument lacking such seriousness that it's not even worth debunking.

Lieberman's response in 2020 was just as unwilling to engage with any critiques in good faith. In fact, he claimed that a Bay Area media executive was architecting a conspiracy to "silence" him. He went on to parrot common reactionary talking points, "I THOUGHT: that the right-wing folks got it all wrong about the so-called progressive left in San Francisco; I thought the progressive left was a community of tolerance and ideas/ Oh well. Time for reflection."

Most importantly, all signs suggest that the SF Giants will still have Duane Kuiper in the broadcast booth in the near future. However, hopefully, this story acts as a reminder to media and fans that they should avoid amplifying Rich Lieberman reports for multiple reasons, including his tendency to seemingly make false reports.