Fake News
CNN Tries to Stealth Edit an Article, Gets Caught for it
CNN misinterpreted a quote from Donald Trump regarding voter fraud during a speech in Colorado. In the original article title was “Trump, skeptical of mail-in balloting, encourages voting more than once if necessary” and CNN took Trump out of context and quoted him saying:
“If you go to university center, they’ll give you a new ballot, they’ll void your old ballot, in some places they do that four or five times, so by tomorrow, almost everyone will have their new ballots in.”
They revised the title and quote once they realized they misquoted him, renaming it “Trump stokes skepticism of Colorado voting system” and adding the full quote:
“If you go to university center, they’ll give you a new ballot, they’ll void your old ballot. They’ll give you a new ballot, and you can go out and make sure it get’s in. Now in some places, they do that four or five times, but we don’t do that. So by tomorrow, almost everyone will have their new ballots in.”
The quote in context is a criticism of the voting system itself rather than endorsing voter fraud, something Trump has been vehemently against.
Mediaite noticed this change and took screen shots of the original and revised titles. At about 8:30 that evening there was no editor’s note acknowledging the important change in the article. An hour after Mediaite wrote about the subject CNN added an editor’s note about the change of the title and Trump quote.
CNN also left up the incorrect title up on twitter for over two hours before taking it down. Vice president of communications at CNN, Matt Dornic, told Business Insider, “a correction note should have been added immediately.” “Our policy states that corrections must be accompanied by an editor’s note disclosing the change,” he said.
As a professional news organization, CNN should not only be making these flubs, but they should have the integrity to fix the confusion they cause. It is no surprise that Trump and his supporters call CNN the Clinton News Network:
