The Epoch Times reported the following today:
An official in the Georgia secretary of state’s office was the only source for at least one story that falsely claimed former President Donald Trump told an investigator with the office to “find the fraud.”
Jordan Fuchs, deputy secretary of state, relayed details of the conversation to The Washington Post, an official with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger confirmed to The Epoch Times.
Fuchs was not on the call herself. She was told about the conversation by Frances Watson, the investigator.
A recording of the call recently emerged from a records request, showing that the Post and a slew of other outlets had falsely reported Trump uttering several phrases.
The office of Raffensperger, a Republican, says Fuchs did not present details of the conversation as verbatim.
“The Secretary of State’s Office’s first reports of its investigator’s phone conversation with President Trump relied on the investigator’s recollection. Information about the content of the call was never presented as a word-for-word transcript,” a spokesperson with the office told The Epoch Times via email.
That story was not only widely reported, it was used a part of the second impeachment trial of President Trump.
The article reports on the quiet corrections being made:
The Post said that it “misquoted” Trump, “based on information provided by a source.” It also outed Fuchs as its source, after previously describing her as an individual familiar with the call.
The Associated Press in its correction used similar wording in explaining that it “erroneously reported” that Trump pressured Watson to “find the fraud,” and that if she did, she would be a national hero.
CNN offered an editor’s note in stating that its initial version “presented paraphrasing of the President’s comments to the Georgia elections investigator as direct quotes.”
As author Jonathan Swift wrote, “Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.” Often quoted as “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” The news media’s coverage of President Trump’s conversation with a Georgia investigator illustrates that statement.