Conservative Website Unpublishes Column Criticizing CNN’s KFile After Reporter Calls Out ‘Factual Errors’

Conservative news website Townhall unpublished an entire op-ed criticizing CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski, after the reporter issued a detailed debunking of the piece on Twitter.

The op-ed — “On CNN’s KFile and the Cost of Media Bias” — written by commentator John Lott, accused Kaczynski and his KFile team at CNN of “falsely accusing Sheriff David Clarke and Monica Crowley of plagiarism when the Trump administration was considering them for positions.”

Lott concluded his piece by calling Kaczynski’s reporting “fake news.”

Kaczynski responded to Lott on Twitter, listing the “serious factual errors” in his piece.

Folks, I don’t usually respond to bad faith opinion pieces, but there’s serious factual errors in this article by @JohnRLottJr I can’t leave unanswered.

In fact, most of the article is wrong. https://t.co/RKLWIOMEjC pic.twitter.com/1aJdnd2gJy

— ?andrew?kaczynski? (@KFILE) October 22, 2018

Most notably: Kaczynski’s reporting on David Clarke led the Naval Postgraduate School to update his thesis, and his reporting on Monica Crowley got her book pulled.

Let’s start off with the beginning. Lot claims we fasely accused Monica Crowley and David Clarke of plagiarism. 1

The Naval Postgraduate School agreed w/our story and forced him to update his thesis or lose his degree.https://t.co/dSc0uXclwW

Monica Crowley’s book was pulled. pic.twitter.com/dcol32bpvZ

— ?andrew?kaczynski? (@KFILE) October 22, 2018

Lott says we omitted the footnotes. Our story noted Clarke used footnotes. Crowley’s book had no footnotes. And on her thesis, Business Insider audited our story themselves when she tried to claim this and found it was 100% accurate.

Read here: https://t.co/ITriww49vz pic.twitter.com/WZ38CYKjsB

— ?andrew?kaczynski? (@KFILE) October 22, 2018

Kaczynski continued to debunk Lott’s piece point by point, calling his claim that CNN was “sitting” on a story about abuse allegations against Keith Ellison a “sick lie.”

Lott falsely claimed we sat on a story about abuse allegations against Keith Ellison. We were reporting the story out when the allegations went public. A sick lie using allegations of abuse to score points. pic.twitter.com/HkfCIacP1x

— ?andrew?kaczynski? (@KFILE) October 22, 2018

Townhall apparently agreed with Kaczynski on the accuracy of Lott’s claims, because on Tuesday the op-ed was entirely scrubbed from the website:

Many thanks to @townhallcom, which agreed with my claims that @JohnRLottJr’s opinion article on me had many factual errors it and unpublished his column: https://t.co/ULRpmbnTuv

— ?andrew?kaczynski? (@KFILE) October 23, 2018

A link to the article now redirects to Lott’s author page on Townhall.

[image via screengrab]