On Sunday night, two major liberal, elitist media defenders — the team at Status and Semafor’s Max Tani — each penned items taking ABC News to the woodshed for a mind-boggling chain of events that led to the publishing of an error-laden story about a Donald Trump Jr.-linked venture capital group, 1789 Capital, followed by a sudden unpublishing, and republishing under a nameless staff byline.
But, as Status wrote at the end of its story, one anonymous source told them ABC News will largely escape both serious criticism and extended coverage because it’s not a David Ellison-owned property like CNN or especially CBS News.
Going first to the Oliver Darcy-led Status, they placed Natalie Korach on the case for a piece with a damning headline and subhead, “ABC’s Deletion Debacle; Status has learned new details about the chain of events that led to ABC News’ publication of its error-riddled Donald Trump Jr. story, which casts doubt on claims it was published prematurely, as frustration mounts inside the network.”
Korach began with 1789 Capital spokeswoman Alexa Henning’s retelling of what happened, starting “on Wednesday morning” as she “spotted a new ABC News story scrutinizing the government contracts awarded to defense company Anduril Industries, which is financially backed in part by the president’s sons.”
The original story had the insidious headline: “Trump sons’ investments have won billions in Pentagon contracts since his election.”
Aside from the factual errors, the next-most damning part Henning revealed to Status was that, in addition to what “Henning noticed” were “significant inaccuracies,” she realized “no one at ABC News—including the article’s author, desk assistant Nathan Lee—had contacted the firm for comment before publication.”
Along with ABC not having sought comment, the most egregious factual error was that, in reality, 1789 Capital had only, in Korach’s retelling, “invested $50 million in Aduril” when the military technology company is “valued at more than $60 billion.”
While Trump Jr. has partner status, he “does not sit on the three-person investment committee responsible for the fund’s allocation decisions.”
Korach said Henning then “scramble[d] as the story gained traction on social media, with high-profile Democrats...sharing the story as evidence of corruption stemming from the Trump White House.”
Henning said she couldn’t reach Lee, so she spoke to “Justin Fishel, the senior coordinating producer at ABC News,” who assured “her he personally helped oversee the story and defended the reporting, Henning told Status, though he acknowledged the error of failing to reach out for comment before publication,” but otherwise defended it.
Korach continued to share what went down on Wednesday, culminating in the article being deleted Thursday, but no statement explaining what had happened. Incredibly, ABC took until Friday to issue any sort of explanation, which was when the tail-covering excuse of “published prematurely” was deployed.
But that didn’t make sense to Henning, given Fishel’s rigorous defense of Lee’s article (click “expand”):
The story set off a daylong back-and-forth between Henning and ABC News, as the spokesperson pressed the network to retract the article and correct what she described as fundamental errors in its characterization of 1789 Capital’s investments and Trump Jr.’s role. By Wednesday evening, Henning escalated matters, warning that the company’s lawyers would be in touch if ABC took no further action. Around 8 p.m., she said, she received a call from Fishel, who told her the network had deleted the article. There was no indication, she said, that ABC intended to re-report the story or eventually republish it with an editor’s note. Henning assumed the network would issue a statement explaining the extraordinary decision.
None came. Instead, the Disney-owned network quietly scrubbed the story from its website, leaving the original URL to direct readers to a 404 error page. ABC declined to explain the mysterious disappearance to Status on Thursday, and by Friday, the episode had drawn wide attention, with several reporters, citing sources familiar with the matter, suggesting the story was removed because it was “published prematurely” and the network was still finalizing its reporting.
That justification, however, did not square with Henning’s account of her conversations with the ABC News editor, who she said had vigorously defended the article before abruptly removing it. “That narrative of incomplete reporting didn’t match up with the defense the editor gave me,” Henning told Status.
Korach also found the “prematurely” claim to be bogus as sources told them “the article was mentioned during the network’s regular 9 a.m. editorial call as part of the day’s digital rundown,” and, upon its first publication, the story was sent “through its usual email distribution[.]”
Predictably, Status found multiple anonymous sources inside ABC who said “they were unaware of the articles errors before the backlash erupted,” but has given away to “considerable concern.” In other words, the salacious claims were too good to check.
Korach connected the errors in this October item to one from March in which ABC claimed 1789 Capital had taken a “major stake” in Anduril.
This was the part when Korach lamented the real issue with this piece of fake news is what “critics” will do with it (click “expand”):
Several staffers worried that critics, eager to undermine the network’s credibility at a precarious time, had been able to capitalize on the controversy.
(....)
For some inside the network, the more troubling issue was ABC News’ reluctance to take public responsibility. Rather than promptly acknowledging the inaccuracies and explaining the retraction, the network allowed the story to vanish without a word, creating an information vacuum that Trump Jr., Luckey, and other critics quickly filled with their own accounts. “If they put out a statement immediately explaining the retraction, this might not even be on your radar,” one ABC News staffer argued.
Indeed, the timing could hardly be worse for ABC News, or for much of the news media, which has been navigating an increasingly aggressive pressure campaign from the Trump administration.
Over at Semafor, Tani had a similar retelling of events and touted that “emails...provided to Semafor, show the network seeking to downplay its errors by misrepresenting its own processes.”
In one such email, “Andruil’s spokesperson” (presumably Henning) pointed out to ABC that “[t]oday, 1789 owns approximately 0.13% of Andruil and has no major investor rights.” Any suggestion that 1789...holds significant ownership...or ‘major stake’...is inaccurate.”
The emails showed that ABC seemed to have said one thing while doing another (click “expand”):
After the story was published on Wednesday, Lee told Anduril that the network was slightly tweaking the language in its piece, but it was otherwise standing by its story.
“I have spoken to my editors and we have updated the story for accuracy,” Lee said in a note. “We had pulled the ‘major stake’ language from previous reporting. 1789 Capital did claim a stake from the $2.5 billion investment your company received, so we are standing by our language to that extent.”
Anduril’s PR team was not satisfied, and continued to press the network to clarify its story, saying that the piece misstated 1789 Capital’s investment in Anduril’s fundraising round.
“It’s still not clear. I read your text and it reads as if they invested the full $2.5b. Would be much more accurate to list their actual investment of $50m and even more accurate to share that they own less than a percentage point in Anduril,” a spokesperson wrote.
In another email later Wednesday afternoon, Lee said ABC News’ editors had reviewed the language and were standing by the piece.
“Apologies, but my editors said we are standing by the language. I’ll make sure to reach out to both of you directly for any future stories,” Lee said.
But by Thursday, the network had changed its mind. The network removed the piece without explanation[.]
Giving his “view,” Tani said the “published prematurely” line was pure “spin to anyone who has dealt with crisis PR” as “[i]t minimized the company’s mistakes and made the situation seem like an accident.”
He also worried about the fallout because “deflections like this can damage the credibility of mainstream, nonpartisan journalism” and provided “the president’s son and many on the right another opening to criticize mainstream news outlets.”
