Misrepresenting the FBI hacking warning story

Both “newspapers” used the same Associated Press story about Russian hacking in the 2016 election on today's front pages. Here’s how the story begins:

The FBI failed to notify scores of U.S. officials that Russian hackers were trying to break into their personal Gmail accounts despite having evidence for at least a year that the targets were in the Kremlin’s crosshairs, The Associated Press has found.

Nearly 80 interviews with Americans targeted by Fancy Bear, a Russian government-aligned cyberespionage group, turned up only two cases in which the FBI had provided a heads-up.

And here’s the suggested AP headline which accurately summarizes the article:

FBI gave heads-up to fraction of Russian hackers’ US targets

And here’s the headline used in both the morning Intelligencer and the afternoon News-Register which totally misrepresents the article that follows:

FBI Gave Warning to Hacker’s Targets

As any number of newspaper studies have suggested, a majority of readers do not read beyond the headline. (60% in this study, for instance.) Hey, if the Democrats were warned, why do we need an investigation?

Trump and the Alabama senate battle

Both front pages also carried the same AP story about Trump’s thoughts on the Alabama senate contest. Here’s the first paragraph:

President Donald Trump said Sunday that electing a Democrat as Alabama’s next senator “would be a disaster,” making clear the success of his legislative agenda outweighs widespread GOP repulsion at the prospect of seating Republican Roy Moore, who is dogged by allegations of sexual misconduct.

The local version of the AP article is exactly the same except that one paragraph is left out. Here’s the context with what’s missing from the Wheeling papers in bold:

Trump had stayed silent on Moore for days until all but endorsing him while departing for Washington last week. The president dismissed questions from reporters about his willingness to back a Republican accused of sexual assault over a Democrat.

Trump, who won election despite facing more than a dozen accusations of sexual misconduct himself, appeared last Tuesday to shrug off the allegations against Moore, saying, “Forty years is a long time.”

Trump has no campaign events for Moore schedule at this time, said White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters.

It’s hard to believe that the locals believe that its readers have never heard about some of the accusations against Trump. (While it has been often missing from the local papers, I assume that some readers do have other news sources besides Ogden papers and Fox News.) I guess the editor didn’t want to take any chances – I can’t think of any other reason for dropping this sentence.