USA Today changed a headline about presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump’s abortion stance after the Biden-Harris campaign called it “erregiously false.”
On Monday, Biden-Harris campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez, deputy communications director Brooke Goren and pro-abortion advocate Kaitlyn Kash held a press call to discuss media coverage of Trump announcing his position on whether abortion should be banned.
Trump explicitly affirmed his support for in vitro fertilization (IVF) and he emphasized his support for states determining their own laws for abortion so long as there are exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.
TRUMP SAYS ABORTION SHOULD BE DECIDED BY THE STATES, ‘WILL OF THE PEOPLE’
“The states will determine by vote, or legislation, or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land – in this case, the law of the state,” Trump said. “Many states will be different. Many states will have a different number of weeks…at the end of the day it is all about the will of the people.”
On the press call, members of the Biden-Harris campaign team slammed coverage of Trump’s announcement.
“One particularly egregiously false headline even said Trump, quote, ‘opposes a national abortion ban and will leave it up to the will of the people,’” the Biden-Harris staffer said.
USA Today covered the news with a headline that said, “’The will of the people’: Trump opposes national abortion ban; says states should decide.”
Mediaite, which captured an image of the original headline, reported that “around two hours after the conference call, the old headline was deleted and replaced” with a new version.
The new headline said, “Donald Trump says states should decide abortion policy, avoids talk of a national ban,” but failed to include any sort of editor’s note explaining the change. USA Today’s website notes that the story was “updated” roughly seven hours after it was initially published but doesn’t explain why.
The updated story still noted Trump wrote, “At the end of the day, this is all about the will of the people,” when offering his thoughts on abortion restrictions.
USA Today told Fox News Digital in a statement that headline updates are “not uncommon” for breaking news.
“Our mission is to report the facts as accurately as possible. As part of our routine editorial process with breaking news, headline updates are not uncommon. In this instance, the headline was updated to more precisely reflect the story,” the statement reads.
Fox News Digital’s Paul Steinhauser and Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.
