Several media organizations were forced to make retractions Tuesday after falsely attributing a staggering Obama-era migrant child-detention statistic to President Trump.
On Monday, Manfred Nowak, an expert from the U.N. Global Study on Children Deprived of Liberty, claimed that 100,000 migrant children were detained by the Trump administration and indicated that it was the “world’s highest rate” of detained children. The following day, however, he acknowledged that the cited number actually was from 2015 — under President Obama.
A separate report last week from The Associated Press and the PBS series “Frontline” found 69,550 migrant children have been held in U.S. government custody in the last year.
Nowak’s admission prompted several media outlets to withdraw their previously reported stories.
“A Nov. 18 story headlined ‘U.S. has world’s highest rate of children in detention -U.N. study’ is withdrawn. The United Nations issued a statement on Nov. 19 saying the number was not current but was for the year 2015. No replacement story will be issued,” Reuters stated.
National Public Radio wrote, “We have temporarily withdrawn this story because the study’s author has acknowledged a significant error in the data. We will post a revised article with more complete information as soon as possible.”
Agence France-Presse (AFP), which has over 1.7 million Twitter followers, issued its own correction. – READ MORE