Every White House team seeks to pressure the media into more favorable coverage. It’s only natural to discover Team Biden can have their way in influencing liberal operations to edit things they’ve already posted. But it usually happens on the “down low,” where there’s no proven connection.
Thomas Catenacci at FoxNews.com reported on Thursday that Snopes.com changed a rating on of their fact checks from “Mixture” to “False” in an article headlined “Is Biden Administration Banning Gas Stoves Over Climate Change Concerns?“
Nur Ibrahim of Snopes noted Richard Trumka Jr., a member of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), said such a ban was “on the table.”
“This is a hidden hazard,” Trumka told Bloomberg at the time. “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”
A month earlier, Trumka said regulating gas stoves needs to be a priority “whether it’s drastically reducing emissions or banning gas stoves entirely” because of their climate and health impacts, CBS News reported.
But Snopes, which originally gave its “mixture” rating as a result of Trumka’s statements, changed the rating to “false,” stating the CPSC is “not currently considering a ban on gas stoves.” Snopes’ updated article included additional comments from the CPSC and downplayed Trumka’s earlier statement.
However, Snopes only altered its article after pressure from the CPSC to do so, according to emails exchanged between CPSC and White House communications officials and obtained by watchdog group Functional Government Initiative (FGI) through an information request.
“Sent over tough letter to this writer yesterday when the initial claim was rated as ‘mixed,'” CPSC communications director Pamela Rucker Springs wrote in an email to White House assistant press secretary Michael Kikukawa Jan. 11, 2023, linking to the updated Snopes fact check.
Kikukawa responded enthusiastically, saying the alteration would be “so helpful going forward.”
Snopes then tweeted it was “simply false” to presume that they changed it due to CPSC “pressure.” It’s obvious that they received an angry call, and then changed it. They just hope nobody connects the dots.
Jason Cohen at the Daily Caller (who interned with us) reported earlier that USA Today altered a Monday headline on Donald Trump’s current abortion stance after the Biden’s campaign blasted the outlet’s coverage.
Trump said on Monday that states should craft their own abortion laws, which many, including USA Today, interpreted as opposition to a federal ban on killing the unborn. But the Biden campaign pressured the media with predictions Trump would end up signing a national ban.
“Trump kept his word to overturn Roe in his last term, and he will not rest until he has banned abortion across the entire country. Period,” Biden campaign Deputy Communications Director Brooke Goren said on the call. “We all know this and the coverage needs to reflect it.” These are the same people who are enraged when Republicans point out they support abortion at any time for any reason up until birth across America.
USA Today’s initial headline on David Jackson’s report was “‘The will of the people’: Trump opposes national abortion ban; says states should decide.” Goren called that “particularly egregiously false.”
About two hours after the conference call, it was changed to “Donald Trump says states should decide abortion policy, avoids talk of a national ban” — without noting the change with an editor’s note. Mediaite first reported the change.
“Our mission is to report the facts as accurately as possible,” a USA Today spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “As part of our routine editorial process with breaking news, headline updates are not uncommon. In this instance, the headline was updated to more precisely reflect the story.”
Updates aren’t uncommon. What’s uncommon is learning how Team Biden pressures “more precise reflections.” This is about a partisan pro-abortion prediction of what Trump would do, not a fact.