A reporter who once covered the Asian American community in San Francisco has been fired from Newsweek after reporting President Trump would be spending his Thanksgiving tweeting and playing golf.
Instead the president made a secret trip visiting troops in Afghanistan.
Jessica Kwong wrote a story published Thanksgiving morning with the head line “How is Trump spending Thanksgiving? Tweeting, golfing and more,” reported the Washington Examiner.
Kwong said when she learned of the trip, her story was updated. She called it “an honest mistake” on Twitter.
Donald Trump Jr seized upon the mistake to ridicule what he perceives as the liberal media with an agenda against his father.
The President, himself, jumped on both Kwong and Newsweek.
The Washington Examiner was the first to report Kwong had been fired.
“Newsweek investigated the failures that led to the publication of the inaccurate report that President Trump spent Thanksgiving tweeting and golfing rather than visiting troops in Afghanistan,” a Newsweek representative told the Washington Examiner. “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.”
According to the Daily Mail, the White House went to great efforts to keep the trip a secret for security reasons. Reporters who boarded Air Force One for the trip were not told the destination until the plane had departed. Their phones were also confiscated. Word broke out about the trip when an amateur British flight watcher spotted Air Force One.
Kwong explained to the Washington Examiner that she had been assigned to write a story about what Trump was doing on Thanksgiving. She said she notified her editor immediately once learning about the trip, but that editor chose to assign the trip to another reporter. A new story was written without her original story being immediately updated. It was eventually updated with the notation “this story has been substantially updated and edited at 6:17 pm EST to reflect the president’s surprise trip to Afghanistan.”
According to her LinkedIn profile, Kwong joined Newsweek in September 2017 covering national politics with a focus on the Trump administration and family. She’s also reported for the Orange County Register covering transportation and multicultural issues and worked at the San Francisco Examiner assigned to a wide range of issues including transportation, housing, immigration, Asian and Latino communities.
Her Newsweek profile which was still up this morning described her as a Los Angeles native who grew up speaking Spanish, Cantonese and English.
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