Right Wing Site Quietly Issues Humiliating Correction to Story on Women’s Soccer Anthem Actions

Ken MeyerJul 6th, 2021, 1:14 pm
 

A conservative-leaning Canadian news website attempted to stealth-edit the headline for one of their articles in order to salvage a source of right-wing outrage that has come into question.

Members of the U.S. women’s soccer team were accused of disrespectful conduct on Monday over the course of their pre-Olympics match against Mexico. Pete DuPre, a 98-year-old World War II veteran, was at the match to play The Star Spangled Banner on his harmonica, but during his performance, footage circulated across the Internet of some players facing DuPre while others were looking in a different direction.

The moment drew notice among conservative news observers who presumed that members of the team were disrespecting the national anthem and DuPre. As such, they took their outrage to Twitter:

As you can see, The Post Millennial latched onto the story in order to condemn the womens’ team for the “disgraceful behavior” from their members. Aside from circulating the video on social media, they posted an article on the incident that was originally titled “DISGRACEFUL: US women’s soccer team members turn their backs to 98-year-old WWII vet playing the national anthem.”

The U.S. Soccer communications team responded to the outrage by insisting the accusations against the womens’ team were false.

“To be clear, no one turned their back on WWII Veteran Pete DuPré during tonight’s anthem,” they said on Twitter. “Some USWNT players were simply looking at the flag on a pole in one end of the stadium. The players all love Pete, thanked him individually after the game and signed a ball for him.”

Midfielder Carli Lloyd repeated that explanation in a Twitter rebuke to the Millennial.

The womens’ team also produced a video of themselves signing a soccer ball for DuPre, as U.S. Soccer’s comm team said they did.

Here’s how the Millennial reacted to Lloyd’s tweet:

As the story developed, Fox News reports that the viral video carrying the original allegations against the womens team was taken down, and the Millennial’s article wound up getting a new headline. This was detected by CNN’s Daniel Dale, who also noted that Breitbart made a similar modification to their framing on the story:

As of this writing, the Millennial’s article, “DISGRACEFUL: US women’s soccer team members turned away from flag as 98-year-old WWII vet played the national anthem,” is still up with an editor’s note on the statements from Lloyd and the womens’ team. They also have another article up with the more neutral headline: “US Women’s Soccer Team, star player respond to latest flag controversy.”

Watch above, via ESPN.

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