Washington Post Rewrites History of George Floyd’s Death

The Washington Post on Monday falsely claimed that George Floyd, who was killed when a police officer kneeled on his neck, was shot to death.

In a tweet that the Post deleted within minutes, the outlet said, “On May 25, 2020, George Floyd was shot and killed in police custody.” The tweet linked to a page that asked readers to submit comments on how their community has changed since Floyd’s death. According to Newsbusters managing editor Curtis Houck, that page also falsely claimed Floyd was shot to death.

Not only did The Washington Post mess this up in their tweet (left) about how George Floyd died, they did the same thing on their own website (right) pic.twitter.com/nWhNEAvFke

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) May 24, 2022

While Floyd was killed in police custody when officer Derek Chauvin kneeled on his neck for more than nine minutes, he was never shot. The Post, after deleting the tweet and correcting the language on the webpage, did not acknowledge the specific error but issued a brief note reading, “We’ve deleted a previous tweet for this form that included language that was changed after publish [sic].”

Monday’s error is not the first time the Post has rewritten historical events. In 2019, the paper through a free daily newspaper it published wrongly identified segregationist Democratic senators James Eastland and Herman Talmadge as Republicans.

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