Fox News Takes Down Quebec Attack Tweet Following Letter from Trudeau’s Office
A spokesperson for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted out a letter the Prime Minister’s Office sent to Fox News regarding a tweet yesterday about the Quebec mosque attack.
Based on early reports, Fox tweeted out “Suspect in Quebec mosque terror attack was of Moroccan origin, reports show.”
Well, that turned out to not be the case. The suspect was identified as Alexandre Bissonnette, a white man, and the Moroccan man incorrectly identified in multiple reports as a suspect was a witness. Fox got some heat on Twitter yesterday for leaving that initial tweet up once this became evident. Fox tweeted this follow-up:
@FoxNews Mosque attack suspect formally charged w/ six counts of murder; Second man cleared, identified as a witness https://t.co/oRzxGHEXDm
— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 30, 2017
As of this posting, the initial Fox tweet has been taken down.
Earlier today Trudeau’s director of communications, Kate Purchase, tweeted out the full letter asking Fox to “either retract or update the tweet to reflect the suspect’s actual identity”:
Earlier today I sent an email to @FoxNews about their misleading tweet yesterday. We will continue to stand up for our citizens (1/3) pic.twitter.com/sGz47PxMcb
— Kate Purchase (@katepurchase) January 31, 2017
(2/3) pic.twitter.com/QLABzidxa4
— Kate Purchase (@katepurchase) January 31, 2017
(3/3) pic.twitter.com/PosgwkBJqR
— Kate Purchase (@katepurchase) January 31, 2017
She followed up after the tweet was removed:
Thank you @FoxNews for deleting the tweet. We appreciate it.
— Kate Purchase (@katepurchase) February 1, 2017
Fox News issued the following statement to Mediaite:
FoxNews.com initially corrected the misreported information with a tweet and an update to the story on Monday. The earlier tweets have now been deleted. We regret the error.
[image via screengrab]
— —
