The Washington Post got slammed by critics after it made massive corrections to a January report about a phone call between Trump and Georgia elections investigator Frances Watson. The leftist publications had previously attributed multiple comments to Trump based on an anonymous source, turns out Trump had never made the comments at all once the phone call went public.
Listen to the phone call HERE.
[jwplayer ay7b1hyd-lzmB6GEw]
Fox News reports:
The Post initially reported Trump had told an official working in Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office to “find the fraud” in the state, which he lost narrowly to Joe Biden, and that she would be a “national hero” if she did.
However, a newly emerged recording of the Dec. 23 call found he didn’t use those words. Instead, Trump said she would be “praised” when the “right answer comes out” and encouraged her to closely examine mail-in ballots in Fulton County, the heavily blue and most populated county in the state.
The Post published a lengthy correction to its story: “Correction: Two months after publication of this story, the Georgia secretary of state released an audio recording of President Donald Trump’s December phone call with the state’s top elections investigator. The recording revealed that The Post misquoted Trump’s comments on the call, based on information provided by a source. Trump did not tell the investigator to “find the fraud” or say she would be “a national hero” if she did so. Instead, Trump urged the investigator to scrutinize ballots in Fulton County, Ga., asserting she would find “dishonesty” there. He also told her that she had “the most important job in the country right now.” A story about the recording can be found here. The headline and text of this story have been corrected to remove quotes misattributed to Trump.”
CNN also reported on the call citing an unnamed source and waited until Monday afternoon to correct its story, after initially stating Trump said “national hero” and “find the fraud” in its opening paragraph. Many outlets picked up the story, including Vox, ABC News, and NBC News.
Critics slammed WaPo for its gross mischaracterization of the phone call between Trump and Watson.
Our media are so, so, so breathtakingly corrupt. They *always* mischaracterized this call — in a corrupt and fraudulent way. But to actually make up quotes in service of that? We are so screwed. By our disgustingly corrupt and unaccountable media. https://t.co/RaRVncJCX3
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) March 15, 2021
So, they made up quotes. What in the actual F https://t.co/OETISsq3tb
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) March 15, 2021
The header for this story could be a little clearer, like “Our Bad, We Made Fake News That Led the National News For Weeks And This Audio Proves It”https://t.co/Y21i6O45ty..
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) March 15, 2021
https://twitter.com/Heminator/status/1371508616327479302
