The website admitted that by later adding accurate context to its story, it “significantly diminished” its news value and led to the article being dropped.

A popular conservative website has retracted an article that falsely blamed President Joe Biden for instituting a policy against religious-themed Easter eggs at the annual White House Easter Egg Roll.

On Tuesday, the Daily Caller retracted an article that began, “The Biden administration banned children from submitting Easter eggs with religious themes for its 2024 ‘Celebrating National Guard Families’ art contest.”

Although the ban against religious imagery goes back to the Carter administration and was in effect during the Trump administration, the Daily Caller ignored that pesky little detail in order to give readers a MAGA opportunity to gripe and moan about a grievance that didn’t exist.

As a result, many conservatives attempted to make hay off the story, even though it was misleading, especially since many also falsely accused Biden of purposely declaring March 31 to be Trans Day of Visibility as a way to insult Christians.

  • borf@lemmynsfw.com
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    9 months ago

    Daily Caller readers aren’t ever going to read the retraction anyway. Truth doesn’t matter to the right in the slightest. Journalists who pretend otherwise are basically larping.

    • Asafum@feddit.nl
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      9 months ago

      It’s literally information warfare.

      We have very little chance. The wealthy literally control reality with media outlets, “we” have absolutely no equal footing in this class war…

    • Asafum@feddit.nl
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      9 months ago

      Fucking exactly.

      It’s a goddamn propaganda outlet that ONLY EXISTS to function as a propaganda outlet.

      We need to do some serious thinking in this country and really hammer down how to define propaganda and separate it from legitimate press.

      It’s one thing if you’re simply reporting the news, whether it’s positive for the right or left, reality is reality, but if your entire existence is “simply” to lie and push a narrative that misinforms the population for political or monetary gain then there needs to be consequences.

      We need a free press, but maybe we need to have some definitions as to what constitutes the press and the whole “tiny-ass text that says opinion” isn’t cutting it. People like my father have said “Shepard Smith is too opinionated, that’s why I like Sean Hannity.” When Smith was the literal journalist side of Fox and Hannity is literally an OPINION show…

  • Billiam@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    The website admitted that by later adding accurate context to its story, it “significantly diminished” its news value

    I’m inclined to believe that “added accurate context” couldn’t have been all that accurate if it “significantly diminished its news value.”

    • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      9 months ago

      You misunderstand. They are saying that by telling the whole truth, the story is no longer worth being on their site.