Former President Trump has given credit to The Washington Post after being forced to issue a major correction over a report on a call he had and Georgia election investigator Frances Watson in an exclusive interview with Fox News Primetime.
The Post initially reported that Trump had an official who worked in Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find ‘the fraud’ in the state, which he lost close to Joe Biden, and that she was a would be ‘national hero’ if she did.
In a recent recording of the December 23 call, it was found that he did not use the words. Instead, Trump said she would be “praised” when the “right answer comes out” and urged her to thoroughly investigate the ballots in Fulton County, the heavy blue and most populous country in the state.
WASHINGTON POST’S MEDIA CRITICAL REPORTS LEAD TO GREAT CORRECTION NEXT TRUMP-GEORGIA ELECTION STORY
During the telephone interview on Fox News Primetime, Trump called the mistake a “terrible thing” that likely affected the Senate contests that the Democratic candidates won.
“I will say this. I was very happy that the Washington Post had the courage or whatever you want to call it to at least admit their mistake. I hope it was a mistake,” Trump told Maria Bartiromo, Fox News, said. “They were told something did not exist and it made me sound bad, and when I heard it, I said, ‘This is ridiculous. I never said it.’
He continued: “The Washington Post made a correction. A lot of pressure was put on them, but they made a correction because they realized what they were doing was wrong.”
The Post published a lengthy correction of his story: “Correction: Two months after the publication of this story, the Secretary of State of Georgia released an audio recording of President Donald Trump’s December call with the investigator of the state’s top elections. survey 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’ instead, Trump asked the investigator to investigate in Fulton County, Ga., claiming that she would find ‘dishonesty’ there. He also told her that she’s the most important “A story about the survey can be found here. The headline and text of this story have been corrected to remove quotes that were incorrectly attributed to Trump.”
The media critic Erik Wemple of the Post on Tuesday went deep into what is wrong with the reporting of his newspaper.
WASHINGTON POST SLAUGHTERED FOR MASSIVE CORRECTION TO TRUMP GEORGIA ELECTION STORY: ‘SO THEY HAVE MADE QUOTES’
The ‘individual familiar with the call who spoke on the condition of anonymity’ in the Post’s first report was’ based on a report by Jordan Fuchs, the Deputy Secretary of State, who informed Watson [Trump’s] comment. “
Fuchs told Wemple: “I believe the story accurately reflected the investigator’s interpretation of the call. The only mistake here was in the direct quotes, and it should have been a summary instead.”
“I think it’s pretty absurd for anyone to suggest that the president is not asking the investigator to ‘find fraud’,” Fuchs added. ‘These are quotes that [Watson] told me at the time. ‘
In response to Wemple, the Post said: ‘We corrected the story and last week published a separate news release – at the top of our website and on the front page – after learning that our source was not exactly following President Trump’s words. We are not retracting our January story because it reflects the content of Trump’s attempt to influence the work of investigators after Georgia’s election. ‘
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Wemple continues with his own article, writing: “The misreporting of the highest-elected official in the country is a serious setback – and one that seems so unnecessary in this case.”
“The existence of the call itself is a big exclusive matter. As far as phone calls are concerned, the only good sources are those that have been dialed,” Wemple explained. “The former president’s party members will try to commemorate The Post’s story as a fabrication or ‘fake news’. But one key fact remains: as the Journal’s survey shows, Trump behaved with all the crooked intentions and proposals he brought after every other crisis of his presidency. ‘
Fox News’ David Rutz contributed to this report.