President Trump lashed out at The New York Times in an early morning tweet on Thursday, calling it a “fake newspaper” after his campaign flagged the publication for altering a headline that some Democratic lawmakers deemed favorable to the president.
“As Chaos Spreads, Trump Vows to ‘End It Now,’ ” the initial Tuesday print edition headline read on a report regarding looting, vandalism, arson and violence in many major cities across the country following the death of African American George Floyd in Minneapolis after a police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.
After some Democratic lawmakers and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign complained about the headline on social media, the headline on the online late edition article was modified to “Trump Threatens to Send Troops into States.”
Trump, who often refers to the media as “fake news,” tweeted out the juxtaposition provided by his campaign on Thursday morning to his more than 81 million followers.
The change came after several Democrats, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), former 2020 presidential candidate Julián Castro and Sen. Brian Schatz (Hawaii), slammed the headline, which was previewed by Times editor Tom Jolly in a since-deleted tweet.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in reaction to the since-deleted headline.
“Headline fail. The President is acting like a budding dictator. Headline fail, @nytimes,” Castro wrote.
“The New York Times headline writers are going to Both Sides the country to death,” Schatz tweeted.
The Times eliminated its public editor position in May 2017, with the paper saying it will depend on an expanded commenting platform in the public editor’s place.
“We are dramatically expanding our commenting platform,” publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said in an internal memo at the time. “Currently, we open only 10 percent of our articles to reader comments. Soon, we will open up most of our articles to reader comments.”
Sulzberger also said the Times is open to hearing “thoughtful criticism” from other news outlets.
“It’s also worth noting that we welcome thoughtful criticism from our peers at other news outlets,” he wrote. “Fortunately, there is no shortage of those independent critiques.”