DC Station Changes Story
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“More than one dozen workers” at Whole Foods Market’s P Street, Northwest, store “have #coronavirus,” WUSA (DC) journalist Michael Quander reported on Twitter Wednesday morning.
Later he took to Twitter again to brag about how his story was trending online.
But then, according to The Washingtonian, the original tweet about the story was deleted and the WUSA online story had a significant correction: “An earlier version of this story reported 12 cases of coronavirus at the P Street Whole Foods. We have only been able to independently confirm four of those cases.” A little later, an update to the correction: “We have only been able to independently confirm at least six of those cases.”
It appears that the WUSA report relied on a single anonymous source, someone “who works as an Amazon shopper at the Logan Circle Whole Foods.”
The uncorrected story had already made a splash in a DC social media ecosystem full of people locked down by the coronavirus pandemic, for many of whom grocery stores are critical infrastructure. The unnamed employee told Quander the store has “not been shut down for a deep cleaning.” A Whole Foods spokesperson told WUSA and Washingtonian that isn’t true: The store has “undergone multiple deep cleanings and disinfections by third parties overnight and after hours, on top of our current enhanced daily sanitation and cleaning measures.”
WUSA VP and station manager Michael Valentine tells Washingtonian in an email that “the source claimed there were 12 cases and provided definitive confirmation of 4, which WUSA9 aired and also included in a subsequent article published on WUSA9.com.” WUSA’s content director, Valentine says, “recognized the discrepancy, and the number was changed to 4 cases, then to 6, to reflect the number of cases we have been able to independently confirm so far. Although our source was able to confirm multiple cases, the original claim of 12 cases should not have made it on the air or onto our digital story.”
Maybe Quander could have taken some time out of bragging about his story on social media and how it was trending and take a look at it to see if it was factually correct.
A Whole Foods spokesperson confirms to Washingtonian that multiple employees at the P Street store have been diagnosed with Covid-19 and says the company didn’t know about the information WUSA’s source shared with Quander until after the story ran.
It seems like another case of WUSA shooting first and then aiming later.
H/T Washingtonian
