Newsweek has just fired the reporter responsible for an inaccurate totally fake “news” story about President Trump “tweeting and golfing” on Thanksgiving – when, he was really in Afghanistan visiting our troops!
The article written by journalist Jessica Kwong was titled How is Trump Spending Thanksgiving? Tweeting, Golfing, and More sparked a wave of deserved backlash, prompting Newsweek to add a redaction and change the headline to How Did Trump Spend Thanksgiving? Tweeting, Golfing–and Surprising U.S. Troops in Afghanistan.
On Friday, the news outlet also stated that they had fired the journalist, announcing,
Newsweek investigated the failures that led to the publication of the inaccurate report that President Trump spent Thanksgiving tweeting and golfing rather than visiting troops in Afghanistan. The story has been corrected and the journalist responsible has been terminated. We will continue to review our processes and, if required, take further action.
Don Jr. and President Trump had blasted Newsweek for the fake news story:
Breitbart has more details:
Newsweek has fired the journalist who was responsible for the false story that President Donald Trump spent Thanksgiving “tweeting” and “golfing,” when in fact the president was secretly traveling to Afghanistan to surprise U.S. troops for the holiday.
Newsweek told Breitbart News in a statement that the magazine has moved away from “knee-jerk political snarkiness” to focus on real reporting.
A Newsweek journalist was terminated Friday after an article entitled, “How is Trump Spending Thanksgiving? Tweeting, Golfing, and More” by Jessica Kwong was published Thursday morning. The piece sparked major backlash, as President Trump had actually been landing in Afghanistan, where he surprised American troops for Thanksgiving.
“The problem with this story is that it didn’t contain reporting,” said a Newsweek spokesperson to Breitbart News in a statement. “It was published before Thanksgiving was over. We are trying to pull Newsweek away from that, and into reporting.”
The article was later updated to reflect the president’s visit, changing the headline to: “How Did Trump Spend Thanksgiving? Tweeting, Golfing–and Surprising U.S. Troops in Afghanistan,” along with an added footnote stating that the story had been “substantially updated and edited at 6:17 p.m. EST to reflect the president’s surprise trip to Afghanistan” via additional reporting by James Crowley.
After the backlash Newsweek received, the (now-fired) journalist, Jessica Kwong, also admitted that the story was fake on her Twitter page:
However, according to The Washington Examiner, Kwong is deflecting blame to her editor...
More on this from The Washington Examiner:
The Newsweek reporter who was fired after writing an inaccurate article about President Trump's Thanksgiving Day plans is deflecting some of the blame onto her editor.
Newsweek initially published the article Thursday morning, before the president's trip to Afghanistan was announced publicly. The story's initial headline was, “How is Trump spending Thanksgiving? Tweeting, golfing and more.”
Kwong told the Washington Examiner that she was assigned to write a story on what Trump was doing on Thanksgiving. The next day, Kwong reached out to the editor on duty and relayed the president's latest actions, after which the story was published. When the president's trip to Afghanistan was announced, that editor then decided to assign another reporter to write a new story about it but neglected to update Kwong's original piece in a timely manner.
The story, which received backlash from both the president and Donald Trump Jr., was updated hours later with a new headline, a note at the bottom of the story, and the angle of the piece was changed to focus on the president's trip.
Join the conversation!
Please share your thoughts about this article below. We value your opinions, and would love to see you add to the discussion!