Posted on Mar 15, 2021
Washington Post runs correction admitting it ‘misquoted’ Trump in Georgia election story
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https://www.vox.com/2021/3/16/22333805/washington-post-correction-trump-georgia
"But according to a newly surfaced recording of the call with Watson, Trump did not in fact use those exact words. He did say she could find “dishonesty” in Fulton County, and that “when the right answer comes out, you’ll be praised.” But the language of the quotes the Post attributed to Trump were not accurate. As a result, the Post had to run a prominent correction. Trump and conservatives are now scorning the paper, and even some mainstream reporters are looking askance and wondering how it happened.
The correction was merited — it’s important for reporters (and their sources) to be careful in attributing exact language in quotes. And it is unfortunate that these incorrect quotes spread so widely. (Vox also wrote about the Post story in an article that has now been corrected.)"
"However, Trump has used the correction to claim in a statement that “the original story was a Hoax, right from the very beginning,” which is untrue. The original story that got so much attention was Trump’s call with Raffensperger, for which we had the full and accurate transcript all along. It has not been corrected. Furthermore, it remains the case that Trump did in fact call Watson to insist he won the state and that she should turn up evidence revealing fraud. “The country is counting on it,” he said."
"Overall, the Post’s correction changes what we know about the exact words Trump said to Watson, but it doesn’t fundamentally change our understanding of what Trump was saying to Georgia state officials at the time."
"Importantly, it doesn’t seem likely that there was malice in the misquotes. The new recording (first posted by the Wall Street Journal) does not get Trump off the hook. Trump is still inappropriately pressuring state officials to come up with findings that will swing Georgia’s result in his favor. And the accurate quotes don’t have a significantly different upshot. (If they had been simply paraphrased rather than in quotation marks, there would likely be no objection to them.)
What seems to have happened is that either Watson or Fuchs was a bit sloppy in what was an exact quote vs. a paraphrase, because they didn’t have the audio handy or strong notes."
"But according to a newly surfaced recording of the call with Watson, Trump did not in fact use those exact words. He did say she could find “dishonesty” in Fulton County, and that “when the right answer comes out, you’ll be praised.” But the language of the quotes the Post attributed to Trump were not accurate. As a result, the Post had to run a prominent correction. Trump and conservatives are now scorning the paper, and even some mainstream reporters are looking askance and wondering how it happened.
The correction was merited — it’s important for reporters (and their sources) to be careful in attributing exact language in quotes. And it is unfortunate that these incorrect quotes spread so widely. (Vox also wrote about the Post story in an article that has now been corrected.)"
"However, Trump has used the correction to claim in a statement that “the original story was a Hoax, right from the very beginning,” which is untrue. The original story that got so much attention was Trump’s call with Raffensperger, for which we had the full and accurate transcript all along. It has not been corrected. Furthermore, it remains the case that Trump did in fact call Watson to insist he won the state and that she should turn up evidence revealing fraud. “The country is counting on it,” he said."
"Overall, the Post’s correction changes what we know about the exact words Trump said to Watson, but it doesn’t fundamentally change our understanding of what Trump was saying to Georgia state officials at the time."
"Importantly, it doesn’t seem likely that there was malice in the misquotes. The new recording (first posted by the Wall Street Journal) does not get Trump off the hook. Trump is still inappropriately pressuring state officials to come up with findings that will swing Georgia’s result in his favor. And the accurate quotes don’t have a significantly different upshot. (If they had been simply paraphrased rather than in quotation marks, there would likely be no objection to them.)
What seems to have happened is that either Watson or Fuchs was a bit sloppy in what was an exact quote vs. a paraphrase, because they didn’t have the audio handy or strong notes."
The Washington Post’s correction about Trump’s phone call to a Georgia official, explained
Trump is claiming vindication. The truth is more complicated.
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I saw this earlier and recall all of the local never-Trump members yelling treason. They won't even have the dignity of a mea culpa. It must be nice to be intellectually dishonest or willfully ignorant all of the time.
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