A Newsweek reporter was reportedly fired shortly after inaccurately reporting on President Trump’s Thanksgiving plans.
On Thursday morning, Newsweek political reporter Jessica Kwong initially published an article with the headline “How is Trump spending Thanksgiving? Tweeting, golfing and more,” before Trump’s surprise visit to Afghanistan was announced publicly.
The Washington Examiner noted that hours after Trump’s surprise Afghanistan visit was announced on Thursday, Newsweek edited Kwong’s article, issued a correction at the bottom of the post and changed the headline to: “How is Trump spending Thanksgiving? Tweeting, golfing — and surprising U.S. troops in Afghanistan.”
According to a Washington Examiner report Saturday, Kwong was terminated in light of the inaccuracies in the report.
“Newsweek investigated the failures that led to the publication of the inaccurate report that President Trump spent Thanksgiving tweeting and golfing rather than visiting troops in Afghanistan,” a Newsweek representative told the Washington Examiner. “The story has been corrected, and the journalist responsible has been terminated. We will continue to review our processes and, if required, take further action.”
Two hours after its Saturday report was published, the Washington Examiner updated it with a statement from Kwong who said that “she was assigned to write a story about what the President was doing on Thanksgiving a week in advance and filed it to her editors on Wednesday.”
“Then, she explained that she sent a message to the editor on duty with the President’s latest actions and the editor published the piece,” the Washington Examiner wrote. “That editor decided to have a reporter write a new story on Trump’s surprise trip to Afghanistan, and neglected to update Kwong’s original piece in a timely manner.”
In response to the initial headline, the President and his son Donald Trump Jr. railed against Newsweek in Thursday evening tweets.
I thought Newsweek was out of business? https://t.co/3ro4eSJloo
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2019
Shortly after Trump Jr.’s Thursday evening tweet, Kwong also deleted her initial tweet and tweeted on Thursday night that the article was an “honest mistake.”
Trump headed to Afghanistan to surprise U.S. troops on Thanksgiving https://t.co/f7Xeqz1ZGQ Deleting this tweet because it was written before knowing about the president’s surprise visit to Afghanistan-an honest mistake. Story has already been updated, as shown in the screenshot. pic.twitter.com/g9CfPaV2kQ
— Jessica Kwong (@JessicaGKwong) November 29, 2019
Read the Washington Examiner’s report here.
