MSNBC retracted a tweet that inaccurately quoted one of its anchors as claiming half of the population in the United States could die from the coronavirus.
The network acknowledged the mistaken quote attributed to Chris Hayes on social media Monday and chalked it up to “an editing error.” Earlier that morning, MSNBC tweeted out a clip of Hayes and quoted him as saying, “There is no option to just let everyone go back out and go back to normal if a pandemic rages across the country and kills 50% of the population.”
Correction: The quote tweeted is incorrect due to an editing error.
It should read: “if a pandemic rages across the country and infects 50% of the population, and kills a percentage point, at the low end”
The erroneous tweet is included for the record. https://t.co/ajvAfsmlKj pic.twitter.com/TFsk5Wk5lA
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) March 24, 2020
However, Hayes did not suggest that the coronavirus would kill half of the U.S. population. Rather, he said, “If a pandemic rages across the country and infects 50% of the population, and kills a percentage point, at the low end,” according to the network’s tweet acknowledging the error.
The original tweet was deleted, but MSNBC included a screenshot of it in its post correcting the record.
As of Tuesday, more than 46,000 people in the U.S. have been diagnosed with COVID-19, and more than 500 have died from it, according to NBC News.
