Tuesday August 6, 2019
Headline says ‘Trump urges unity vs racism’, prompting accusations that paper fed president’s narrative.
The New York Times was forced to change its front-page headline for Tuesday’s newspaper amid intense backlash over how it portrayed Donald Trump’s statement on the El Paso and Dayton mass shootings that left 31 people dead.
The original headline read: “TRUMP URGES UNITY VS RACISM.” Many Twitter commentators complained that the wording fed Trump’s claims that those who called out his persistent anti-immigrant rhetoric – some of which was parroted in the El Paso gunman’s alleged manifesto – were playing politics.
The headline first gained widespread attention when it was tweeted out by prominent statistician, FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver:
As Silver’s tweet was being reshared thousands of times, the Times changed the headline for the second print edition to, “ASSAILING HATE BUT NOT GUNS.” A Times spokesperson acknowledged to the Washington Post: “The headline was bad and has been changed for the second edition.”
But it seems the damage had already been done. Many prominent Democrats, including several presidential candidates, tweeted to accuse the Times of distorting Trump’s teleprompter address. And some people even threatened to cancel their subscriptions.
From Democratic 2020 presidential candidate Kirsten Gillibrand:
From the Democratic 2020 candidate Cory Booker:
The Democratic 2020 candidate Beto O’Rourke, who used to represent part of El Paso in the House, offered a one-word response:
The New York mayor, Bill de Blasio, who is also running for president, mocked the Times using a tagline from its ads:
And Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called out what she sees as “the cowardice of mainstream institutions”.