Editor’s note: This post was scheduled to publish at 8:01 a.m. on Oct. 24, 2019. A malfunction kept the post from publishing. Working to address the problem resulted in it publishing at 11:05 a.m. but with the 8:01 a.m. time stamp. We then immediately added this note and corrected the time stamp.
On Oct. 21, 2019 Zebra Fact Check sent a correction request to Lead Stories via editor Maarten Schenk. Lead Stories lists Schenk as the contact for correction requests.
Ordinarily we allow at least a week to pass before publishing our email outreach efforts. We make an exception in this case because Zebra Fact Check is publishing a story where the email outreach counts as relevant context.
We will update this item if we receive a noticeable response from Lead Stories.
A .pdf version of our email message follows:
Dear Maarten Schenk,
While preparing a story on Lead Stories’ would-be debunking of National Review’s article saying Hillary Clinton said Russian [sic] was grooming Tulsi Gabbard, I noticed a fairly clear-cut error.
The story originated from an article (archived here) published by The National Review on October 18, 2019 under the title “Hillary Clinton Claims Russians ‘Grooming’ Tulsi Gabbard as Third-Party Candidate”.
The problem is one of chronology. The fact check asserts that the story “originated” with National Review. The publishing time stamp for the National Review story was 11:48 a.m. But the Daily Beast published a parallel story the hour before, wearing a 10:49 a.m. time stamp (Oct. 18, 2019).
The Daily Beast story ran with this headline:
Hillary Clinton Appears to Claim Russians ‘Grooming’ Tulsi Gabbard to Run as Third-Party Candidate
Lead Stories should either clarify how National Review originated the story an hour after the Daily Beast published, or else run a correction correctly identifying which publisher originated the story. Alternatively, Lead Stories could run a correction omitting as unfounded the claim National Review originated the story.
Cheers.