Over two months after the rest of the liberal media latched onto a Washington Post report claiming then-President Trump called up a Georgia election official and ordered them to “find the fraud,” the paper admitted they were peddling fake news. But with the rest of the media scrambling to make the corrections in their online copies of the story, ABC News and PBS, who talked about the now-debunked order on-air, refused to give corresponding corrections to their viewers Monday.
During a January 10 report for Sunday’s Good Morning America, correspondent Elwyn Lopez announced: “And the President's false claims of voter fraud continue to be in the headlines. In a late December phone call, President Trump encouraged an election official here in Georgia to, quote, ‘find the fraud.’”
But at no point, during Monday’s newscast, did ABC’s World News Tonight correct the record for viewers. Instead, anchor David Muir talked about the snow in Colorado, touted New Mexico Rep. Deb Haaland (D) getting confirmed as the interior secretary, and fawned over the Oscar nominations.
As for their online report, ABC buried the correction. Nowhere near the top of the article did it indicate the piece was recently edited. They crammed this editor’s note at the very bottom, and at no point did they say who they “confirmed” the false information with at the time:
Editor's note: Two months after this story was originally published, ABC News obtained a recording of then-President Donald Trump's call with Frances Watson, the chief investigator in Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office, via an open records request. ABC News had first reported that, according to an individual familiar with the matter, Trump phoned Watson during a signature match audit, telling her to "find the fraud" and that she would be a "national hero" for it. However, in the recording of the call, Trump does not say those exact words. This story and its headlines have been updated to remove those quotes.
It was a similar story over on PBS’s NewsHour.
As part of the January 10 weekend edition of the newscast, anchor Hari Sreenivasan pushed the false Washington Post report. “As Congress weighs impeaching Mr. Trump, there are new reports that the President interfered in Georgia's election results beyond his now-public phone call to Georgia's secretary of state,” he said. “The Washington Post reported yesterday that President Trump called a Georgia election investigator and pressured him to, quote, ‘Find the fraud’ in a phone call shortly before Christmas.”
Adding: “Legal experts told The Post the President's attempts to intervene in an ongoing investigation could amount to obstruction of justice or other criminal violations, but may be difficult to prove.”
NewsHour Weekend also had a report about the phone call on their website. But as of the publication of this piece, no correction or editor’s note had been made.
And while neither CBS nor NBC gave The Post’s report any airtime, they did post articles about it online (January 10 and January 9 respectively). But just like PBS, as of the publication of this piece, neither of them had been corrected.
Their Monday refusals to correct the record in service of their viewers was made possible because of lucrative sponsorships from WeatherTech on ABC and Consumer Cellular on PBS, which got a special shout out as the program ended. Their contact information is linked so you can tell them about the biased news they fund.
The transcripts are below:
ABC’s Good Morning America
January 10, 2021
8:34:44 p.m. Eastern(…)
ELWYN LOPEZ: And the President's false claims of voter fraud continue to be in the headlines. In a late December phone call, President Trump encouraged an election official here in Georgia to, quote, “find the fraud.” Eva.
EVA PILGRIM: Elwyn Lopez, there for us. Thank you.
PBS’s NewsHour Weekend
January 10, 2021
6:03:23 p.m. Eastern(…)
HARI SREENIVASAN: As Congress weighs impeaching Mr. Trump, there are new reports that the President interfered in Georgia's election results beyond his now-public phone call to Georgia's secretary of state. The Washington Post reported yesterday that President Trump called a Georgia election investigator and pressured him to, quote, "Find the fraud" in a phone call shortly before Christmas.
Legal experts told The Post the President's attempts to intervene in an ongoing investigation could amount to obstruction of justice or other criminal violations, but may be difficult to prove.
(…)
