Isn’t this intriguing? An incendiary headline was atop an “exclusive” on the Fox News digital website. The story was former Health and Human Services secretary Tom Price quoted as saying he would not support Donald Trump and furthermore, Trump could “kiss my big medical butt.” The story spread like wildfire on the internet. Here is the PolitiZoom version.
A few hours later Fox News retracted the story and Raw Story retracted their version.
A story published by Fox News that formed the basis of a Raw Story report was later retracted by Fox Friday.
The story claimed Trump’s former cabinet member Tom Price lashed out at his prior boss, saying the former president can “kiss” his “butt” in response to a question about whether he’d support Trump once again.
Fox later issued an editor’s note that read: “This article inaccurately attributed a quote to former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price and has been retracted.”
Raw Story has also removed the story.
I’m researching which other outlets are removing the story. For the moment, I’m marking the original story “UPDATED” and adding the information about the retraction. When I figure out what’s going on, then I may entirely remove the story.
My goal is to get a reading, if possible, on how Fox News felt comfortable running the piece in the first place and what happened to change their minds.
In all events, the issue will be solved by midnight tonight, July 7, Pacific Time.
Never a dull moment, right?
UPDATE 8:45 p.m. PT:Â Other outlets who carried the story are leaving the story up. Out of an abundance of caution I’m pulling the story down. I don’t want to be accused of fake news and since the source, Fox News, has retracted the story, they’ll undoubtedly be contacting us to remove the story.
This happened on one other occasion. A reporter stated that Shepard Smith had been escorted out of Fox News, back when he left the network. The reporter later retracted her story and Fox News asked us (and a lot of other people) to retract ours and we did.
I’m always happy to comply with anything reasonable. We play fair around here.
Yes, it’s Fox and sourcing news isn’t exactly their strong suit. Still, this was up for long enough that there was plenty enough “there” there to publish the original story in the first place. And there’s no doubt both Ruppert Murdoch and his son Lachlan want Trump out of the picture. Still, with all their legal problems and with a riled up set of viewers my guess is that they decided after a few hours to hedge their bets by issuing a retraction. Being so direct and blunt will have the added benefit of them being able to dodge personally talking with Trump, as any conversations with him could easily veer into territory that could lead to an uncomfortable “date’ with Jack Smith!
I marvel that a story of that level of controversy was published and then suddenly retracted. I would love to know the inside story of this but maybe we never will.
It’s your site, Ursula, and you’re more than free to do as you choose but I might have left the story up but with an added disclaimer–at the beginning–that the source for your story was FoxNews and that they had pulled the story from their site and then added a cautionary tale about believing anything that originates from FoxNews.
Who knows? FoxNews may have pulled the story because they didn’t want to bear any more of Trump’s wrath, especially with the very lawyerly statement given with the retraction about “inaccurately attributed.” Did Price actually threaten to sue over the story, claiming he hadn’t said it? Where does such a quote come from in the first place and why would anyone attribute it to Price rather than whoever (if anyone) really did say it? If it was purely made up by someone at FoxNews, why hasn’t that person been publicly identified and fired? The very retraction raises a lot more questions than the original decision to run the quote and story in the first place.
Believe me, I agonized over what to do. I ultimately decided to just use the highest journalistic ethics and pull the piece down. That way, nobody can ever accuse us of exploiting a bad situation.
Whatever happened, the news story was published in many outlets before the retraction came. Maybe that was the plan? I have no idea. We truly live in a world where the goal posts are always moving.
I did keep the text of the story in another file and if and when we find out what happened here, maybe I’ll republish it.