The Washington Post released remarks reportedly made by then-President Donald Trump during a phone call with Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Monday, revealing that the paper had ‘erred’ in publishing them.
“Correction: The Georgia secretary of state released an audio recording of President Donald Trump’s December phone call with the state’s top elections investigator two months after this article was published,” The Post annotated online at the top of the original story.
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Based on details given by a source, The Post misquoted Trump’s remarks on the call, according to the recording.
Trump did not advise the investigator to “search the scam” or that if she did, she would be a “national hero.”
“Rather, Trump urged the investigator to review ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, believing that she would find ‘dishonesty’ there,” the correction added. He also assured her that she was in charge of “the most important work in the country at the moment.”
The paper went on to state that its fake article had been “corrected to delete quotes attributed to Trump.”
That was an egregious error that, frankly, should be prosecuted; the false report “undoubtedly played a part in the Georgia special elections, which resulted in the Republicans losing control of the Senate.”
Kyle Becker pointed out on Monday that it was also listed in the House Democrats’ misleading impeachment case.
But it gets worse — and this, in turn, reflects the sad state of ‘elite’ media in our country today, which is in serious trouble.
According to the Epoch Times, the information given to the Post was third-hand (and uncorroborated by the Post):
“An official with the Georgia secretary of state’s office was the sole source for at least one report falsely claiming that former President Donald Trump ordered an office investigator to “search the scam.”
An official with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger reported to The Epoch Times that Jordan Fuchs, deputy secretary of state, forwarded specifics of the conversation to The Washington Post.
Fuchs was not on the phone at the moment. Frances Watson, the prosecutor, informed her of the conversation.
A recording of the call recently surfaced as a result of a records request, revealing that the Washington Post and a slew of other outlets had recorded Trump saying some things that were inaccurate.
Fuchs did not present specifics of the conversation verbatim, according to Raffensperger’s office.
“The first news of the Secretary of State’s Office’s investigator’s phone call with President Trump depended on the investigator’s memory. A representative for the office told The Epoch Times via email that information about the call’s content was never delivered as a word-for-word transcript.
According to Andrew Schotz of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Ethics Committee, reporters couldn’t even investigate a story like this without at least two reliable, corroborated sources a few years ago. Of course, reporters tired out their shoes following down leads back then.
“People have too many different sources to choose from, and you want them to choose you,” he said, adding that today’s media outlets are more concerned about being first than with being correct. “It feeds on itself, and the rivalry can even lower your standards.”
It’s possible. But this is also true: in the Trump era, leftist ‘mainstream’ outlets like the Post, as well as the New York Times, CNN, and others, were more involved in trashing Trump and his administration day in and day out.
Since they, too, agreed with the “get Trump” agenda, they caused their reputation to be shattered in the process.
