On April 1, 2025, The Horse received a 420-page report detailing direct financial and organizational connections between The Paladin, Furman University’s “student-run” newspaper, and the office of President Elizabeth Davis. We spoke with the whistleblower on the condition of anonymity, as they feared retaliation from FUPO’s secret operations unit.
The report traced historical ties between the office of the university president and The Paladin. According to the whistleblower, the paper was established in 1916 by then-president Edwin McNeill Poteat under the name “The Hornet.”
“The famous quote, ‘Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’ is often attributed to Louisville, KY boxer and activist Muhammad Ali. In reality, this saying first appeared in an internal public relations strategy document of Furman University President Edwin McNeill Poteat, who graduated from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY. According to journal entries written by his advisors, Poteat would rhetorically ‘float’ around questions about his alleged corruption and order The Hornet to ‘sting’ his enemies in the press,” the report said.
Poteat’s legacy of propagandized media doesn’t end at Furman. After leaving his role as president of Furman University, Poteat traveled to China, where he helped lay the ideological foundations for the country’s modern state-controlled media landscape.
“Poteat worked as a professor of philosophy and ethics at University of Shanghai from 1921-1927. After developing a fondness of strong executive control over the media from his time as president of Furman University, Poteat taught early Chinese Community Party leaders his philosophical justifications for state-run media and how to use it to attack opponents,” the report said.
Furman’s climate of weaponized media continued throughout the 20th century.
“Why do you think the paper was renamed to ‘The Paladin’ in 1970? Because hornets aren’t powerful enough. The capability of a painful sting wasn’t enough for the president — they needed a soldier to smite their enemies,” the whistleblower said.
And that’s exactly what is happening now. Carter Ozburn, The Paladin’s puppet leader, allegedly met with President Davis on March 26, 2025 to discuss their targets for the Fall 2026 semester.
“YDSA this, KA that, The Paladin is low-key boring af. I guess Lizzie D just scrolls on YikYak all day and orders her minions to regurgitate whatever slop will divide the student body to distract them from the real crisis at Furman: the disappearance of Bread and Bowl. I don’t know who they are going after next, but real talk, who they actually need to target is FUSAB,” one junior student said in an interview conducted during the creation of the report.
While we don’t know what Davis and Ozburn’s next conspiracy will be, make sure to follow The Paladin on Instagram (@thepaladin.news) and regularly monitor their website so we can all call out their egregious misinformation campaigns.
