Remember that Newsweek article published this week alleging an army of Kremlin-connected trolls took down disgraced former Senator Al Franken, D-Minn.?
As it turns out, I wasn’t the only one who thought the story was a load of nonsense. Newsweek’s editorial team (what’s left of it, anyway) has formally retracted the story. Where once there stood several words alleging the senator was brought down by the Russians, as opposed to the seven women who came forward to accuse him of sexual misconduct, there is now only this editor’s note:
Newsweek has retracted its story about a conservative botnet effort to force the resignation of Senator Al Franken. The initial report was based on research conducted by Unhack The Vote, a group examining outside influence in U.S. elections and politics. It alleged that a “decidedly alt-right” botnet “weaponized” anti-Franken stories and amplified pressure on Franken to resign after allegations of sexual misconduct. Newsweek was unable to independently verify their claims after a further review of their work. Newsweek regrets the error.
When the story first came out, I noted that it contained at least one glaring error. The author, reporter Nina Burleigh, wrote that notorious right-wing troll Charles Johnson tweeted on Nov. 20, 2017, that he would pay people to go on television to accuse Franken of being a predator. But this didn’t happen, and we know this because Johnson’s account was suspended permanently three years ago.
I also noted the obvious absurdity of the report’s entire premise — that Russian bots supposedly ousted Franken by circulating a critical op-ed on the same day he announced he was leaving the Senate. By the way, the op-ed in question was also written after 40 Democratic senators had already called on Franken to resign. How one can come to the conclusion that this was the thing that brought down the senator is anyone’s guess.
Burleigh herself said of her article’s eventual fate, “We are retracting the Al Franken story. After investigating further we can’t verify source claims that the botnet was political. I’m sorry.”
I can’t decide what’s worse: That this story went to publication in the first place or the fact that this is Newsweek’s second high-profile retraction in just four months. Recall they had to pull down a story in October of last year alleging the girlfriend of the Las Vegas gunman, Stephen Paddock, had two Social Security numbers.
