Jessica Kwong has been demonized by both sides of the aisle. To the right, she’s the reporter who posted a fake news story claiming President Trump was golfing and Tweeting on Thanksgiving when in reality he was spending his holiday serving food and spending time with soldiers in Afghanistan. To the left, specifically Newsweek and their cronies, she’s a journalist who embroiled them in controversy over a story that was inaccurate. But based on her story (as well as common sense), she’s a victim of bad editorial decisions that led to her being made into a scapegoat for the once-prominent news outlet.
According to Kwong, she was assigned the story a week before Thanksgiving. She was to detail how the President spent previous holidays and speculate about how he would be spending this one. In that regard, the story was accurate, and had it been published the day before Thanksgiving rather than while he was landing in the Middle East, the story would have been a big nothingburger, some minor fodder for Trump supporters to say, “Your prediction was wrong.”
The way the story read backs up Kwong’s assertions. It was Newsweek’s editors who decided to run the story on Thanksgiving itself. When Kwong learned the President had gone to the Middle East, she called for her story to be edited to reflect the new information and took down her Tweet, replacing it with this one:
Trump headed to Afghanistan to surprise U.S. troops on Thanksgiving https://t.co/f7Xeqz1ZGQ Deleting this tweet because it was written before knowing about the president’s surprise visit to Afghanistan-an honest mistake. Story has already been updated, as shown in the screenshot. pic.twitter.com/g9CfPaV2kQ
— Jessica Kwong (@JessicaGKwong) November 29, 2019
Now, before we brand her a victim, it should be noted the tone of the story was quite negative. She clearly didn’t approve of the President’s past Thanksgiving endeavors and fully expected him to do the same thing this year. But for Newsweek to fire her over it is idiotic unless she’s lying about the timeline. She did what she was assigned to do and corrected the article with more information. Granted, the “correction” was conspicuously buried at the very bottom of the article and the initial set of edits were not reflective of the President’s true actions. But it was technically correct even if it was disingenuous.
She was turned into a sacrificial lamb at the alter of cancel culture, but she was the wrong lamb to roast. It was the editors who touched the story who should have been rebuked, and even then termination is overboard. Newsweek is making a bigger deal out of it for the sake of protecting their fading credibility. The story was speculation that should have run before Thanksgiving. It’s bad journalism, but it’s not inaccurate. Nevertheless, here we are. Kwong was martyred to protect the people above her.
Fake news is bad enough by itself. Once we through in bad decisions and finger-pointing, it’s clear the progressive mentality in newsrooms across America is not just making them push false narratives, but also fail to accept responsibility for failures.
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