Jessica Kwong Fired For Donald Trump Thanksgiving Story, Says She Filed It Wednesday, ‘Newsweek’ Didn’t Update
Jessica Kwong, the former Newsweek reporter who originally published a story on President Donald Trump‘s Thanksgiving plans titled “How is Trump spending Thanksgiving? Tweeting, golfing and more,” was fired from the publication, but has since alleged that the publication didn’t update the story with the new information in a timely manner.
According to The Washington Examiner, Kwong’s original story on the topic of the president’s plan for the American holiday was published before the president’s secretive trip to the Afghanistan was made public.
Kwong, in an update to The Washington Examiner, put forth that she was assigned the story a week prior to anyone in the public knowing what Trump’s real plans for Thanksgiving actually were and that she filed the story on Wednesday.
She also stated that she contacted Newsweek‘s editor on duty to update on what Trump had done since she filed the story. The editor published the story shortly after, before news broke of Trump’s surprise trip. Newsweek’s editor on duty assigned the story of the president’s trip overseas to a different reporter, and did not update Kwong’s original story with the changes to his plans in a timely manner.
Prior to Kwong’s explanation regarding what she believes happened that led to the failure, Newsweek told The Washington Examiner that an investigation into what might have gone wrong leading up to the publishing of the inaccurate story before revealing what course of action they took as a result.
“The story has been corrected, and the journalist responsible has been terminated. We will continue to review our processes and, if required, take further action,” a Newsweek spokesperson stated.
Several hours after Kwong’s original piece was published, Newsweek updated her story with a new headline that read, “How is Trump spending Thanksgiving? Tweeting, golfing — and surprising U.S. troops in Afghanistan.”
At the end of the updated version of that story, Newsweek added information to reflect the changes that were made.
“This story has been substantially updated and edited at 6:17 p.m. EST to reflect the president’s surprise trip to Afghanistan. Additional reporting by James Crowley,” the update read.
Kwong later apologized for the apparent mix-up in a tweet on Thursday evening.
“Deleting this tweet because it was written before knowing about the president’s surprise visit to Afghanistan — an honest mistake,” Kwong wrote as part of her apologetic tweet.
Trump headed to Afghanistan to surprise U.S. troops on Thanksgiving https://t.co/f7Xeqz1ZGQ Deleting this tweet because it was written before knowing about the president’s surprise visit to Afghanistan-an honest mistake. Story has already been updated, as shown in the screenshot. pic.twitter.com/g9CfPaV2kQ
— Jessica Kwong (@JessicaGKwong) November 29, 2019
However, the damage had already been done, with Trump and several others on social media seizing the opportunity to label the original Newsweek story as “fake news.”
In fact, Trump asked his followers in a Thursday evening tweet, “I thought Newsweek was out of business?”
There have been no further updates on Kwong’s Twitter account regarding the incident.
