The customers of Newsmax were outraged on Tuesday when the far-right channel posted on social media about Donald Trump’s “degrading rhetoric” during a campaign stop.
Newsmax, a strong supporter of Trump, shared a Reuters wire story on its network. However, the post on X (formerly Twitter) made it seem like the article was written by Newsmax, without clearly indicating that it was a Reuters story. The channel echoed the wire story’s opening paragraph almost word for word in the X post, which has now been removed.
The tweet by Newsmax that caused a lot of controversy.
The Newsmax article titled “Trump Calls Migrants ‘Animals’ In Michigan Stop” received significant attention, particularly from conservatives. However, fact-checks following the article challenged Trump’s fear-mongering regarding the border crisis. Reuters, for instance, highlighted that researchers have found no evidence to support the claim that individuals living in the U.S. illegally are more prone to committing violent crimes than native-born citizens.
The report also mentioned that Trump often makes unfounded claims about migrants causing an increase in violent crime in American cities. In fact, just recently, he repeated an baseless statement suggesting that Latin American countries are intentionally sending their criminals to the United States.
The editors made significant changes to the article afterwards in order to soften the opening paragraph. They removed the language that was considered degrading and also left out a few fact-checks.
It seems that many of the participants were unaware that the article they were reading was actually a mainstream wire story, or that it may have been generated automatically.
I have contacted Newsmax for comment, and HuffPost is awaiting their response.
The X post caused a rapid and intense wave of outrage before it was eventually taken down and the article was revised on Wednesday.
Newsmax is fake news trash.
— Brenden Dilley (@WarlordDilley) April 3, 2024
Who’s side are you on? Biden’s?
— JOHNNY L i B e R t Y 🍊 🇺🇸 🍊 🇺🇸 (@Fight2B_Free) April 3, 2024
Done with @NEWSMAX
— Brandon Baribeau (@BrandonB16701) April 3, 2024
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