Donald Trump’s team and TV Azteca are disputing a BuzzFeed report alleging the presumed GOP nominee abruptly canceled a scheduled meeting with the Mexican news group after he learned his interviewer spoke Spanish.
TV Azteca’s editor-in-chief said Monday in a note to CNNMoney that they “didn’t really” have an interview scheduled with Trump. The reporter who was supposedly snubbed, Marcos Stupenengo, also confirmed early Tuesday morning that there was never any scheduled interview.
Instead, the freelance journalist explained on social media, Trump’s people approved his request to film at Trump Tower, but said the request was denied later on site. The real estate mogul’s team told Stupenengo he was approved by mistake, they apologized for the inconvenience and the reporter said he was escorted from the property.
Just to clarify, No personal interview with Donald Trump was canceled. A film request was approved by phone and denied on site.
— Marcos Stupenengo (@mstupenengo) May 17, 2016
TV Azteca released a final statement Tuesday explaining what happened:
Marcos Stupenengo, a freelance reporter for TV Azteca, was working on a segment about how campaign headquarters operate. He received verbal confirmation from the Trump campaign to shoot b-roll and interview staffers, which was denied to him when he arrived at the Trump headquarters in New York on Friday, May 13. Mr. Stupenengo never requested a one-on-one interview with Mr. Trump.
BuzzFeed reported a very different version of events on Monday.
The article’s original headline read, “Trump Campaign Canceled A Reporter’s Interview After They Heard Him Speak Spanish.”
The story then reported:
Marcos Stupenengo, a freelance correspondent working for TV Azteca, got an interview with Donald Trump — initially. He had no trouble when he asked to come to Trump Tower in New York on Monday to interview the bombastic presumptive Republican nominee.
But as he waited to conduct the interview, Stupenengo received a call, and began speaking in Spanish. That’s when the Trump campaign informed him they had no interest in taking part in an interview with him, according to a source with knowledge of the incident.
Reached for comment, Stupenengo forwarded the request to the network. “I can say that after 13 years of journalism worse things have happened to me,” he wrote in an email, declining to comment further.
[…]
A Spanish-speaking Secret Service agent with Trump apologized to Stupenengo, saying he was sorry and he didn’t know what was happening, the source with knowledge of the incident said.
BuzzFeed’s version of events was soon repeated by several online news groups, including Gawker, Salon, Politico, Mediaite, Boing Boing, the Hill, the Week, AOL News and the Daily Beast.
As it turns out, however, the original BuzzFeed report is false, according to Trump’s people and TV Azteca, and the article has since undergone heavy revisions.
The story’s headline has been amended so that it now reads, “The Trump Campaign Told A Reporter They’re Not Interested In Spanish-Language Media Coverage.” There is also a note at the top of the story that reads, “Update: TV Azteca said the reporter did not have a ‘scheduled’ interview but was told the Trump campaign is not interested in coverage from Spanish-language networks.”
The Mexican news group and Stupenengo maintain that a Trump campaign official told the freelance journalist, “We’re not interested in coverage from Spanish-language media.”
However, Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks denied the charge Tuesday, telling Univision in a statement that it was “absolutely false.”
Buzzfeed’s editor-in-chief, Ben Smith, did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
