USA Today, a national newspaper chain, looks like it has given into the pressures of the Biden campaign.
Following complaints by the Biden campaign regarding a headline the paper wrote about former President Donald Trump’s views on abortion, the paper changed the original headline it wrote.
On Monday, a joint news conference was held with two officials with the Biden-Harris campaign — deputy communications director Brooke Goren and campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez — along with pro-abortion activist Kaitlyn Kash.
According to Fox News, the trio complained about how USA Today had covered recent comments Trump made about where he stands on abortion.
In those comments, Trump said he supported in vitro fertilization (IVF) but maintained that states have to take the lead in making rules regarding abortion. He also said he doesn’t believe that there should be one national rule that applies to the procedure across the country.
USA Today’s story about the remarks had an initial headline that read, “‘The will of the people’: Trump opposes national abortion ban; says states should decide.”
At the news conference, the Biden-Harris representatives insisted that Trump was the one “responsible for the nightmare” women in the country are facing today about abortion. They added:
“One particularly egregious false headline even said Trump, quote, ‘opposes a national abortion ban and will leave it up to the will of the people.’
“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.”
They further attacked the media for giving what they called preferential treatment to Trump. The trio said:
“We all know this and the coverage needs to reflect it.”
Only seven hours following the initial publication of the article, USA Today decided to change the headline. It says now, “Donald Trump says states should decide abortion policy, avoids talk of a national ban.”
Media outlet Mediaite noted that the article from USA Today doesn’t have any mention at all that the headline was changed in any way. They also didn’t explain why they changed the headline in the first place.
In commenting to Fox News, USA Today officials said that it makes choices such as this routinely, noting that changes to headlines are “not uncommon.”
In a statement, the paper said:
“Our mission is to report the facts as accurately as possible. 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.”
The timing of the headline change — and the fact that it was made about the Biden-Harris campaign called the paper out — certainly seems fishy, to say the least.
In many ways, it looks like USA Today is making business decisions based upon what the White House believes it should do, rather than making them as an independent national newspaper chain should.
