WSJ admits to mistake in coverage of Warsaw's Independence March
PR dla Zagranicy
Victoria Bieniek
17.11.2017 12:39
The Wall Street Journal has issued a correction regarding part of its report on Warsaw's Independence March.
Warsaw. Photo: Skitterphoto/pexels.com/CC0 License
In its coverage of the 11 November march which drew 60,000 people to the capital, the journal referred to a number of banners which appeared at the march which read: “White Europe”, “Europe will be White” and “Clean Blood”.
It also referred to a “Pray for Islamic Holocaust” banner which was suspended over a bridge in Poznań in 2015, saying it had been displayed in Warsaw.
The Wall Street Journal told a reporter from thenews.pl in an email: ”An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the banner hung over a Warsaw bridge".
The Daily Caller website reported that Wall Street Journal reporter Drew Hinshaw said: “We never said that banner was at the march. I think some other outlets might have misreported our reporting, but it’s a question for them”.
On 13 November, Polish journalist Tomasz Łysiak took to Twitter to highlight the error.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="pl"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">"Pray for an Islamic Holocaust": Tens of thousands from Europe’s far right march in Poland <a href="https://t.co/xdNdPt3nVC">https://t.co/xdNdPt3nVC</a></p>— Washington Post (@washingtonpost) <a href="https://twitter.com/washingtonpost/status/930053822415822853?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">13 listopada 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The Daily Caller added that “unclear and incorrect language” in the Wall Street Journal report “led to rampant inaccuracies in reports published by CNN, The Washington Post" and other outlets.
The Daily Caller added that CNN has since changed its article, while the Washington Post had issued a correction.
The Wall Street Journal also issued a clarification regarding the march's slogan: “We want God”.
"[It] comes from an old Polish song, which U.S. President Donald Trump quoted in July during a speech in Warsaw. An earlier version of this article didn’t specify that the quote from Mr. Trump’s speech was a reference to the song, which Poles used to respond to Pope John Paul II during a 1979 visit to the country," the Wall Street Journal said. (vb/pk)