Washington Post Forced To Issue Correction After Botched Trump Report Causes Confusion
The news was sensational.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Twitter had banned President Donald Trump — whose signature tweets have remade the face of political communication — from tweeting because of a comment he made about the coronavirus.
The report spread like mad. Journalists for The Post made sure of that as they tweeted the news to their followers.
But then they had to delete all that when the truth came out that The Post had gotten it wrong.
The original post read this way: “Breaking: Twitter said it will require President Trump to remove a post containing coronavirus misinformation, banning him from tweeting until he does so. Twitter hid the post and said he will not be able to tweet from his account until he deletes it, although he can appeal the decision,” according to Fox News.
Readers who see the updated story now will see something different.
“Correction: Twitter penalized Team Trump, the president’s campaign account. An earlier version of this article said that Twitter penalized President Trump’s account,” The Post wrote in an italicized correction that now serves as the first paragraph in its revised story.
The publication of what The Post admitted was false news led some on Twitter to condemn the newspaper.
I fell victim to #fakenews from the #WashingtonPost, who originally said Twitter had locked Pres. #Trump‘s account—@realDonaldTrump. WaPo later issued correction that the official Twitter account of the Trump Campaign, @TeamTrump had been locked. Never trust the Washington Post. pic.twitter.com/5DUdFSpCUO
— Mark Vallen (@mark_vallen) August 6, 2020
No real journalism left https://t.co/c9LnVXCUQ8
— robert accardi (@accar1) August 6, 2020
TRUMP 2020
End the bias media! https://t.co/AX5b8vJjx3— Patti Page (@PattiPa66209021) August 6, 2020
As reported by Fox News, Facebook and Twitter muzzled a video clip of Trump, in an interview, saying that children are “almost immune” to the coronavirus.
They called the claim misinformation, then blocked it on the campaign page’s Facebook account and disabled it in the page’s Twitter account.
Then Twitter banned the Team Trump account from tweeting until the post that contained the video was taken down.
The Post’s article includes a comment from a Twitter spokesperson that the tweet was “in violation of the Twitter Rules on COVID-19 misinformation. The account owner will be required to remove the Tweet before they can Tweet again.”
Trump campaign spokeswoman Courtney Parella told Fox News that the president was “stating a fact that children are less susceptible to the coronavirus.”
“Another day, another display of Silicon Valley’s flagrant bias against this President, where the rules are only enforced in one direction. Social media companies are not the arbiters of truth,” she said.
On Thursday, Trump responded to the incidents during an appearance on Geraldo Rivera’s radio show on WTAM-AM in Cleveland, according to Bloomberg.
“They’re doing anybody, on the right, anybody, any Republican, any conservative Republican is censored, and look at the horrible things they say on the left,” Trump said.
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