Is Something Dying in Darkness at the Washington Post? The newspaper corrects its story on a famous Trump phone call. James Freeman
Misleading media coverage about Donald Trump and his supporters has been so common in this era that perhaps it no longer qualifies as news. But it can still do harm to public understanding of national events.
The Washington Post has recently made a significant change to a story it published in January, which now carries the following notice at the top:
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.” …The headline and text of this story have been corrected to remove quotes misattributed to Trump.
The Post was forced to amend its story by last week’s publication of a recording of the phone call by the Journal’s Cameron McWhirter.
Back in January, the original story and its inaccurate quotations were widely circulated in major media and did not escape the notice of Mr. Trump’s political adversaries. Mark Hemingway writes at The Federalist:
… House Democrats would cite the article and its fabricated quotes on page 10 of their impeachment brief, as well as highlight the article and its fake quotes in oral arguments during the televised impeachment trial.
Now the Post’s media critic Erik Wemple notes:
The Post’s account of the call rested on one source — “an individual familiar with the call who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the conversation.” Though that source wasn’t identified in the Jan. 9 story, The Post did identify her in its follow-up based on the Wall Street Journal scoop: “The Washington Post reported on the substance of Trump’s Dec. 23 call in January, describing him saying that Watson should ‘find the fraud’ and that she would be a ‘national hero,’ based on an account from Jordan Fuchs, the deputy secretary of state, whom Watson briefed on his comments.”
In an interview with the Erik Wemple Blog, Fuchs said, “I believe the story accurately reflected the investigator’s interpretation of the call. The only mistake here was in the direct quotes, and they should have been more of a summary.” Fuchs said that The Post disclosed her role in the story with her permission, and that she’d gotten the debriefing from the investigator — a direct report of hers — “shortly” after the call from Trump concluded.
To review, the Post ran with bogus quotations attributed to President Donald Trump supplied by one anonymous source who was not even on the call. Two months later, when a Journal report revealed the quotations to be false, the Post only revealed the identity of the anonymous bearer of false information after she granted her permission.
How kind of the Post and how generous of Ms. Fuchs to finally let readers in on the full story. We live in an age of cancel culture, but it seems that people who fabricate negative stories about Mr. Trump can expect eternal media forgiveness.
This is perhaps the perfect ending to the story of Trump-era press coverage and helps explain why media outlets never punished the anonymous sources of bogus Russia collusion stories by outing them. The bearers of false witness never gave their permission! Will this odd media courtesy be extended to anonymous sources who supply false claims about President Joe Biden ?
In today’s story, the Post’s media critic does offer criticism of his media outlet but also takes the opportunity to condemn once again the person misquoted by the Post. What’s particularly chilling is Mr. Wemple’s contention that the fabricated quotations were “unnecessary” in the telling of a damning story about Mr. Trump.
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