On Wednesday, President Trump complained that the Washington Post had misrepresented Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert R. Redfield when it published a headline that reads, “CDC director warns second wave of coronavirus is likely to be even more devastating.”
The quote in the article itself is accurate, said both the president and Redfield. However, they added, the headline is misleading.
This seems like a fairly reasonable criticism, yet several journalists came away from the exchange claiming Trump had disputed a quote Redfield himself said was accurate.
The CDC director “didn’t say it was a big — a big explosion,” Trump said at the briefing. “The headline in the Washington Post was totally inaccurate. The statement wasn’t bad in the Post, but the headline was ridiculous, which is — as I say, that’s fake news.”
Here is exactly what Redfield said in an interview with the Washington Post:
“We’re going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same time,” he said.
Redfield himself clarified what he said earlier about a second round of the coronavirus in the fall.
“When I commented yesterday that there was a possibility of the fall, winter — next fall and winter,” he said Wednesday, “It could be more difficult, more complicated when we have two respiratory illnesses circulating at the same time: influenza and the coronavirus-19.”
Redfield added, “But I think it’s really important to emphasize what I didn’t say. I didn’t say that this was going to be worse. I said it was going to be more [complicated] or more difficult and potentially complicated because we’ll have flu and coronavirus circulating at the same time.”
He stressed that he said earlier this week that the fall may be “more difficult,” not “more impossible.”
“I’m accurately quoted in the Washington Post as ‘difficult,’” Redfield added. “But the headline was inappropriate.”
After all of this, several journalists responded to the exchange by implying or declaring outright that Trump had disputed a quote that even Redfield said was accurate.
Washington Post White House reporter Seung Min Kim, for example, tweeted only this from the presser:
“I’m accurately quoted in the @washingtonpost,” CDC’s Redfield says.
— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) April 22, 2020
Is that a subtweet to the editor who wrote the headline?
Trump’s campaign later shared Redfield’s remarks on social media, claiming he had been misquoted by the Washington Post. That’s when multiple journalists and Post employees got really touchy over their headline being inaccurate.
“Who are you going to believe,” quipped the Washington Post’s Philip Bump, citing Kim’s lone tweet, “the Trump campaign’s demonstrably iffy social media account or the guy to whom they’re referring?”
NBC News producer and left-wing activist Kyle Griffin tweeted, “6:15 PM Trump on CDC Director Redfield: ‘He was misquoted.’ 6:17 PM ABC’s [Jon Karl]: ‘You were accurately quoted, correct?’ Redfield: ‘I am accurately quoted in the Washington Post.’”
The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake also said, “Trump said his CDC director was ‘misquoted.’ Then his CDC director said he was ‘accurately quoted.’” Blake even wrote an entire article titled, “Trump’s strange claim about his CDC director being ‘misquoted’ reinforces his coronavirus alternate reality.”
We are at the point now where we cannot trust members of the corporate press to report accurately on the simple things. You are really better off watching the White House briefings unfiltered on YouTube, or not following the coverage at all
