The New York Times changed its original headline about President Donald Trump’s response to the two mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton after the newspaper received instant and intense criticism that its choice of words appeared to falsely give credit to the president as a unifier, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
Just an hour after the headline, “TRUMP URGES UNITY VS. RACISM” went viral, the Times announced it had changed the wording, telling the Post in an email that “The headline was bad and has been changed for the second edition.”
Later editions of the print edition of the Times had the headline, “ASSAILING HATE BUT NOT GUNS,” with the subheads above the two articles about the president’s speech also altered.
The original headline in the print edition appeared to start gaining widespread attention when it was posted on Twitter by FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, who wrote that he was not sure this is how he would have framed the story.
During his speech on Monday, Trump spoke about setting “destructive partisanship aside” and using “one voice” to “condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacy,” which sharply diverged from a large number of divisive statements the president has publicly directed at minorities. Trump’s speech contained no mention of new gun control legislation.
Harsh criticism from the public about the original headline included remarks from several 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, who were upset that the newspaper had unfairly given Trump credit for unifying when, in their opinion, the opposite has been true.
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