After Uproar, Washington Post Edits Headline Pointing Out Garland ‘Vowed to Depoliticize Justice’ Before Trump Raid

Zachary LeemanAug 10th, 2022, 1:34 pm
 
Washington Post Changes Garland Headline After Causing Uproar

OLIVER CONTRERAS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

The Washington Post changed a headline on a story covering the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property after the framing caused backlash on social media.

The original headline for the story read: “Garland vowed to depoliticize Justice. Then the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago.” The Tuesday piece, by Perry Stein, argued Attorney General Merrick Garland has found himself in a “political firestorm” amid the Trump raid and accusations of political bias, bias Garland was clear he would not tolerate when taking office.

Garland promised there would “not be one rule for Democrats and another for Republicans, one rule for friends and another for foes, one rule for the powerful and another for the powerless, one rule for the rich and another for the poor, or different rules depending upon one’s race or ethnicity” after be sworn in to his office.

On Wednesday, the Post tweeted a “clarification” to the previous headline.

“Clarification: A previous tweet of this story had a headline that has changed after publishing. We’ve deleted the tweet,” the outlet tweeted. The new headline to the piece reads: “FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago lands Merrick Garland in a political firestorm.”

The Post changed the headline after the original blunt one caused uproar from mostly liberal pundits and commentators.

“Dear dumbass WaPo headline writer who posted this before your Editors changed it. The fact that the target of a search warrant is a former elected official doesn’t mean that DOJ has been ‘politicized.’ They’ve charged former elected officials every month since DOJ’s inception,” commentator Ron Filipkowski tweeted in reaction.

“Democracy dies in darkness, but it lives in the ratio,” writer and former House staffer Aaron Huertes tweeted in response to the Post’s correction.

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Zachary Leeman

Zachary Leeman covered pop culture and politics at outlets such as Breitbart, LifeZette, BizPac Review, HollywoodinToto, and others. He is the author of the novel Nigh. He joined Mediaite in 2022.