CBS News Gets Mercilessly Dragged Over Headline Claiming NFL Players Are Protesting National Anthem

CBS News Gets Mercilessly Dragged Over Headline Claiming NFL Players Are Protesting National Anthem

Saturday morning, CBS News tweeted out a straight news story on Texas Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke’s defense of NFL players protesting racial injustice and police brutality during the playing of the national anthem before games. Just one little problem — the headline claimed that NFL players were actually protesting the anthem and O’Rourke was claiming there was “nothing more American” than that.

Well, it didn’t take long for that erroneous framing to get called out online. I mean, in the screenshot of the tweet above, one can already see how bad The Ratio was for CBS.

Eventually, CBS News changed the headline of the piece online and added the following editor’s note:

The headline of this story has been changed to more wholly reflect O’Rourke’s remarks and correct a previous headline that stated O’Rourke said there was “nothing more American” than NFL players protesting the national anthem. Players who kneel during the national anthem are protesting police brutality and racial inequality.

The network also sent out a series of tweets explaining the correction while leaving the original tweet up on the timeline.

The author of the piece also took to Twitter to state that the article was published with a “misleading headline” while linking to the newly-titled post.

Justin Baragona

Justin Baragona is the founder/publisher of Contemptor and a contributor to The Daily Beast. He was previously the Cable News Correspondent for Mediaite and prior to starting Contemptor, he worked on the editorial staff of PoliticusUSA. During that time, he had his work quoted by USA Today and BBC News, among others. Justin began his published career as a political writer for 411Mania. He resides in St. Louis, MO with his wife and pets.

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