Earlier today we told you how Washington Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler shared this totally bogus tweet from Politico that falsely said, “Clarence Thomas claimed in a dissenting opinion that Covid vaccines are derived from the cells of ‘aborted children’.”
ICYMI, here’s a screenshot:
Hi @GlennKesslerWP,
As the head of Washington Post’s fact-checking operation, can you please explain how you justify retweeting this indisputably false factual claim?
Do you just assume any media claims are factually true without checking?
(Ht/t @redsteeze) pic.twitter.com/h1iNT34qME
— AG (@AGHamilton29) July 1, 2022
Politico has finally deleted that tweet and issued a correction:
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in a dissenting opinion Thursday cited claims that Covid-19 vaccines were “developed using cell lines derived from aborted children." https://t.co/kTsSvbUSWd
— POLITICO (@politico) July 1, 2022
But, that tweet is still misleading:
This is still a misleading headline. He was quoting the petitioner. https://t.co/1X5YWnTWg1
— “Max” (@MaxNordau) July 1, 2022
There was a second tweet in the correction thread but that gets even less attention:
“For the record: This corrects an earlier deleted tweet that misattributed the claim that Covid vaccines were “developed using cell lines derived from aborted children” to Thomas. The story and this post were updated to directly state that he was referencing petitioners’ claims.”
For the record: This corrects an earlier deleted tweet that misattributed the claim that Covid vaccines were “developed using cell lines derived from aborted children” to Thomas. The story and this post were updated to directly state that he was referencing petitioners’ claims.
— POLITICO (@politico) July 1, 2022
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Now, everyone else please learn from this:
Glad Politico fixed this egregious error – unfortunate it had already gone so viral but hopefully everyone can learn from it. https://t.co/L6woG7Adr8
— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) July 1, 2022
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Related:
Rex Chapman thread shows Clarence Thomas haters are now ‘scraping the bottom of the barrel’
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