New York Times Forced To Issue Correction In Report About Charlie Kirk

The New York Times issued a devastating retraction to its reporting on Charlie Kirk after falsely claiming that he had been criticized on both the right and the left for a history of antisemitic statements.

The Gray Lady inaccurately attributed an antisemitic remark to Kirk, leading the paper to withdraw part of its reporting for a story titled, “Where Charlie Kirk Stood on Key Political Issues.” Included was an alleged statement about Jewish communities that the Times had falsely attributed to Kirk, a staunch supporter of Israel.

An editor’s note states, “An earlier version of this article described incorrectly an antisemitic statement that Charlie Kirk had made on an episode of his podcast. He was quoting a statement from a social media post and went on to critique it. It was not his own statement.”

The statement was made in a November 15, 2023, tweet that Kirk repeated one day later on his podcast.

“Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them,” he said, referring to his own post, which was later retweeted by Elon Musk.

In the next breath, he said, “Now I don’t like generalizations. Not every Jewish person believes that.”

The original Times story stated that Kirk “was repeatedly accused of antisemitism, including by fellow conservatives,” and cited the statement.

After a correction was posted, online critics blasted the liberal paper for injecting its bias into coverage of Kirk’s death.

“The New York Times told millions of readers that Charlie Kirk was anti-semitic. And then, quietly, they offered this correction that only a handful of readers see – that the opposite was true,” one person wrote on X, the Daily Mail reported.

Another said, “This ‘correction’ by the New York Times of a report, in which they falsely accused Charlie Kirk of making an ‘antisemitic’ statement, is tantamount to an admission of guilt.”

The 31-year-old Kirk was shot and killed on the campus of a Utah college where he was answering questions as part of his “American Comeback” tour, a chance for the Turning Points USA founder to engage with both conservative and liberal young people on the issues. He was seconds into answering a question about the motivations of transgender mass shooters when he became the victim of a mass shooting himself.

The Times’ correction is just one of several that legacy media or contributors have suffered.

Matthew Dowd, a Times columnist, was dropped as a contributor by MSNBC after claiming on Wednesday that “hateful words” by figures like Kirk lead to “hateful actions.” Popular horror author Stephen King retracted an earlier post on X where he falsely accused Kirk of advocating for the killing of gay people.