The Washington Post denied accusations that changes to a frontpage headline Tuesday night were because a number of liberals and anti-President Donald Trump journalists criticized the news outlet for being too positive of the president’s State of the Union address.
Instead, WaPo told the Washington Examiner, a change to a headline was made because editors thought it better reflected the message of Trump’s remarks.
“As the speech was being delivered and observed, editors quickly concluded that a different headline would better reflect the full speech,” a WaPo spokesman told the Examiner. “So, a change was made between editions. The headline was again changed for the final edition.”
The original headline read “A call for bipartisanship.” Shortly after the paper tweeted an image featuring the headline, a number of Twitter users and journalists replied criticizing the editorial tone. Roughly an hour later, the headline was changed to “A ‘new American moment’.”
WaPo released a public statement denying the change had anything to do with reactions on social media. Instead, the paper said the change reflected “our customary internal conversations.”
“Like most newspapers, the Post often rethinks, refines and rewrites headlines from one edition to the next based on its own internal discussions about what best captures the nature of a story. Headline changes last night were based exclusively on our customary internal conversations,” the statement read.
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