The Washington Post said it made changes to what would have been its front page layout following President Trump’s State of the Union address merely because editors had decided a new one better reflected the speech, and not because of complaints from the left.
“As the speech was being delivered and observed, editors quickly concluded that a different headline would better reflect the full speech,” a spokesperson for the Post said Wednesday in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “So, a change was made between editions. The headline was again changed for the final edition.”
A little after 11 p.m. on Tuesday night, the Post’s official Twitter account posted an image that said it reflected the layout for the next day’s print edition. The top headline said, “A call for bipartisanship,” and featured an image of Trump giving his speech. A smaller headline to the side said, “Trump delivers message of unity.”
Critics, however, said that the headline was too sympathetic to Trump and what they called an uncompromising, overtly partisan address.
It’s hilarious that Washington Post can be ratio’d into changing their front page headline. And then get ratio’d again for it. pic.twitter.com/WM68Tk535Z
— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) January 31, 2018
“Are you kidding me?” one person remarked. “How about the racial fear-mongering? How about the attacks on our institutions? How about his refusal to enact the sanctions?”
Another person replied to the Post, “Are you actually kidding? His mouth said he wanted to work together but the policies he presented, the framing of the policies — it was all designed to be actively appalling to Democrats. There was nothing bipartisan about it at all.”
About an hour later, the paper sent out another tweet with a new layout image. This one said, “A ‘new American moment'” as its main headline, a reference to a line from the speech. The other headline about “a message of unity” was removed.
Some observers thought that the Post had made the change as a reaction to liberal critics.
But the paper’s original statement on the matter disagreed. “Like most newspapers, the Post often rethinks, refines and rewrites headlines from one edition to the next based on its own internal discussions about what best captures the nature of a story. Headline changes last night were based exclusively on our customary internal conversations.”
The spokesperson denied that its changes had anything to do with the criticism it had received on Twitter.
