Elizabeth Warren’s disastrous DNA report and accompanying announcement video have been removed from her campaign website, a move that all but retracts the Massachusetts senator’s long-held claim to Cherokee Indian heritage.
Until this weekend, the senator’s campaign website included a 2018 DNA test showing she is anywhere between 1/64th and 1/1,024th Native American. Warren’s website also included a video touting the report’s results, boasting that it vindicates her decision as a law professor to claim Cherokee Indian heritage for legal and professional purposes. All of that has been wisely removed, according to the Daily Caller, now that Warren is the bona fide second-place contender in the 2020 Democratic primary.
Warren also offered a mealy-mouthed apology to Native American leaders this week, telling them that she has made some “mistakes” in her handling of ancestral claims.
“I know that I have made mistakes. I am sorry for harm I have caused,” the senator said Monday at the Native American Issues Forum. “I have listened and I have learned a lot, and I am grateful for the many conversations that we’ve had together. It is a great honor to partner with Indian country.”
One question that remains is this: Now that Warren herself has withdrawn the supposed proof of her supposed Native American heritage, where does that leave the newsrooms that reported initially that her DNA stunt “proves” her ancestral claims? Will newsrooms follow suit and outright retract their faulty and embarrassing initial reports?
The Boston Globe’s first headline on the matter read, “Warren reveals test confirming ancestry.” Its report, which was the first of many, was twice corrected later due to its author’s poor understanding of basic math. The since-corrected errors claimed originally that Warren’s ties to Native American heritage were stronger than the DNA report shows.
As a reminder, the Boston Globe is the same newsroom that issued a major correction in 2012 after it claimed, without evidence, that Warren’s great-great-great-grandmother was Native American. The correction reads:
The document, alluded to in a family newsletter found by the New England Historic Genealogical Society, was an application for a marriage license, not the license itself. Neither the society nor the Globe has seen the primary document, whose existence has not been proven.
As for initially hailing the DNA test as a victory for Warren, the Boston Globe is far from being alone.
The Huffington Post published two videos, the first titled, “After Years Of Ridicule From Trump, Warren Proves Native American Ancestry,” and the second titled, “Warren’s Native Ancestry Proof.”
“Elizabeth Warren Fights Trump’s ‘Pocahontas’ Taunt With DNA Test Proving Native American Roots,” read a Daily Beast headline. It published a second headline titled, “Elizabeth Warren releases her DNA test: Yes, she is Native American.”
The Intercept went with this: “Elizabeth Warren Reveals DNA Evidence of Native American Ancestry, Replying to Trump’s Taunts.”
“A DNA analysis done on Sen. Elizabeth Warren provides strong evidence she has Native American heritage, a claim her critics have long mocked,” the Associated Press reported incorrectly on social media.
Politico reported, “Elizabeth Warren hits back at Trump, releases DNA test ‘strongly’ supporting Native American ancestry.”
To be fair, some publications quoted the words “strong evidence” in their headlines directly from the DNA report itself, albeit perhaps with insufficient skepticism. That includes CNN (“Elizabeth Warren releases DNA test with ‘strong evidence’ of Native American ancestry”) and the Washington Examiner (“Elizabeth Warren’s DNA test shows ‘strong evidence’ of Native American blood”). And many of the newsrooms mentioned in the above later published follow-up reporting and commentary noting that Warren’s DNA test showed the opposite of what she claimed it did.
That said, what are we to make of their initial reporting now that the senator has disowned her own so-called proof? That is, now that the senator’s own campaign team has removed the test and the accompanying announcement video from her 2020 website, perhaps journalists also should consider retracting stories that claimed initially that the stunt vindicated Warren.
