Tipsheet

Reporter for The Hill Published a Major Lie About Kelly Loeffler and a Former KKK Leader

Beth Baumann
Beth Baumann  |  December 13, 2020 10:35 PM

UPDATE (10:55 p.m. EST):

The Hill has since deleted the false story off of Twitter.

ORIGINAL POST

Sarah Polus, a reporter for The Hill, on Sunday published an article claiming Sen. Kelly Loeffler's (R-GA) campaign defended a photo she took with Chester Doles, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan. She cited an original article that was published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The problem, however, is the entire story is a bold faced lie. Loeffler's campaign has said she had no idea who Doles was when the picture was taken and they condemned him and his actions. 

“Kelly had no idea who that was, and if she had she would have kicked him out immediately because we condemn in the most vociferous terms everything that he stands for,” Stephen Lawson, Loeffler’s campaign spokesman, said in a statement to The AJC.

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The AJC's reporting reflected that Loeffler's campaign condemned Doles. 

Instead of reporting that Loeffler's team condemned Doles, the reporter wrote that Loeffler defended Doles. In fact, the original headline for the article was “Loeffler's campaign defends photo with white supremacist and reported former KKK leader Chester Doles.”

She ended up rewriting the article and changing the headline to “Loeffler's campaign condemns white supremacist who appeared in photo." Instead of issuing an editor's note or any kind of correction, the bottom of the article simply reads "Updated at 8:45 p.m."

Below is a comparison of both stories:

At the time of this publishing, The Hill's Twitter account still has the false story tweeted.