Coverage Of American Muslims Is Bigoted And Inaccurate. This Group Is Using Hard Facts To Fix It.
ABC News apologized on Wednesday for briefly airing an erroneous graphic during a special report indicating President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort pleaded guilty to five charges of manslaughter.
Manafort was jailed last week after authorities arraigned him on a new charge of witness tampering. He faces charges of conspiracy and money laundering as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election. Prior to his federal hearing on Friday, in which a judge ordered him jailed, Manafort was under house arrest.
At no point has Trump’s former campaign manager been charged with manslaughter, but the factually wrong graphic stayed on the screen during a report on Trump’s plan to sign an executive order amending his “zero tolerance” immigration policy for about six seconds before it was corrected.
Here is the full moment pic.twitter.com/79eNGznvJB
— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) June 20, 2018
ABC News was swift to apologize, saying the network regretted the error and was investigating how the incorrect information was made into a graphic and then allowed to air.
“We apologize to our viewers and to Mr. Manafort,” the statement read. “There simply is no excuse for this sort of mistake.”
Statement from @ABC News: We regret and apologize for the false lower third graphic that aired during our special report. We are investigating how incorrect information was in our system and how and why it was allowed to air. (1/2)
— ABCNews PR (@ABCNewsPR) June 20, 2018
(cont.) We apologize to our viewers and to Mr. Manafort. There simply is no excuse for this sort of mistake. (2/2)
— ABCNews PR (@ABCNewsPR) June 20, 2018
Trump seized on the moment and attacked the network as fake news. He also used the opportunity to once again criticize Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s meddling, which he has repeatedly referred to as a witch hunt.
Look what Fake ABC News put out. I guess they had it prepared from the 13 Angry Democrats leading the Witch Hunt! #StopTheBias pic.twitter.com/c0XOk1btEQ
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 20, 2018
