WorldNetDaily has been trying to change the subject whenever it gets associated with spreading “fake news” (even though it indisputably has).
But WND has been caught spreading fake news again.
A Dec. 7 WND article by Joe Kovacs carried the headline “Video: ‘Migrant’ kicks young woman down flight of stairs.” It began: “Video emerged Wednesday of a young woman in a German subway station being kicked down a flight of stairs, in what some are calling an unprovoked attack by a ‘migrant gang.'”
But sometime after its posting and Dec. 10, Moore’s article got scrubbed, to the point that Kovacs’ byline was removed from it. The headline was changed to “Video: Man kicks young woman down flight of stairs” — with “man” replacing “migrant” — and the lead paragraph adds that the alleged perpetrator is “unidentified.”
A later paragraph originally stated that “It has not been reported if police have any suspects,” but that also was rewritten to add that “it cannot be confirmed at this point if the perpetrator is actually a migrant.” The original is below, followed by the updated version:
Curiously, though WND has the capability of noting updates in its articles (in red type after the posting date), at no point does this acknowledge this article has been updated to remove what WND decided after the fact was false, fake information — let alone explain to readers why.
This isn’t the first time Kovacs has gotten things wrong. In 2011, for instance, he wrote that Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s name came up “at least nine times on [Supreme Court] dockets involving Obama eligibility issues” stemming from her connection as Obama’s former solicitor general; in fact, none of those docket items has anything to do with “eligibility issues.” That article required some heavy scrubbing as well.
WND recently claimed to be “the real mainstream when it comes to where Americans go to get the real news.” (Funny, reporting “the real news” is also what Kovacs said he joined WND to do.) If WND has to heavily correct a story days after the fact, then hide from its readers the fact that those corrections were made — and if Kovacs has continued employment at WND despite a history of serious, embarrassing errors — it’s not really real, is it?
(h/t Richard Bartholomew)