{"id":92237,"date":"2017-09-22T05:34:22","date_gmt":"2017-09-22T05:34:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/ap-forced-to-correct-false-report-on-graham-call-with-mccain.html"},"modified":"2017-09-22T05:34:22","modified_gmt":"2017-09-22T05:34:22","slug":"ap-forced-to-correct-false-report-on-graham-call-with-mccain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/political\/ap-forced-to-correct-false-report-on-graham-call-with-mccain.html","title":{"rendered":"AP forced to correct false report on Graham call with McCain"},"content":{"rendered":"\"Sen.<\/picture>\n

\n Sen. Lindsey Graham, right, with Sen. John McCain.<\/p>\n

\u00a0(AP Photo\/J. Scott Applewhite, File)<\/p>\n

The Associated Press issued a correction after falsely reporting that Sen. Lindsey Graham was caught talking to a fellow senator on his cellphone about his health care bill, when he was actually being interviewed for the \u201cHannity\u201d show.<\/p>\n

AP reporter Calvin Woodward assumed Graham, R-S.C., was urging a colleague to vote for the bill despite \u201call its imperfections\u201d when he was actually on live radio.<\/p>\n

The original report did not offer any concrete evidence that Graham was talking to a fellow politician, and Woodward seemingly presumed the worst when he heard the senator say things including, \u201cWe\u2019re going to vote\u201d and \u201cEverybody will be held accountable,\u201d while speaking in a crowded airport.<\/p>\n

\u201cGraham made his comments in a cellphone call in front of a passenger at Reagan National Airport before he boarded a flight. A reference to working \u2018for Arizona\u2019 suggests Graham was talking to his good friend Sen. John McCain. Graham\u2019s office did not dispute the quotes, nor confirm who was on the call,\u201d the original AP story noted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis story has been corrected to reflect that Graham was speaking in an interview, not with a fellow senator,\u201d is now noted at the bottom of the corrected version<\/a> of the story.<\/p>\n

President Trump recently expressed his approval of the Graham-Cassidy Bill \u2013 put forth by Graham and Bill Cassidy, La. \u2013 in multiple tweets this week, going so far as to publicly criticize Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, the only Republican senator who already opposes the bill.<\/p>\n

The legislation is largely seen as a last-ditch effort by the Republicans to make good on their years-long promise to replace ObamaCare, and Graham was simply explaining the situation to Sean Hannity, host of Fox News Channel\u2019s \u201cHannity,\u201d when the AP reporter assumed he was discussing the vote while surrounded by strangers in a crowded airport.<\/p>\n

Kevin Bishop, Graham\u2019s communications director, told The Daily Caller that it would have been easy<\/a> to \u201cfigure out who he was speaking with\u201d if the reporter listened to the entire conversation.<\/p>\n

Senate Republicans have until Sept. 30 to advance the bill using a special procedure to avoid a filibuster.<\/p>\n

Brian Flood covers the media for Fox News.<\/p>\n

Follow him on Twitter at @briansflood<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feeds.foxnews.com\/~r\/foxnews\/politics\/~3\/ZhghqAyYpCc\/ap-forced-to-correct-false-report-on-graham-call-with-mccain.html<\/a>\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sen. Lindsey Graham, right, with Sen. John McCain. \u00a0(AP Photo\/J. Scott Applewhite, File) The Associated Press issued a correction after falsely reporting that Sen. Lindsey Graham was caught talking to a fellow senator on his cellphone about his health care bill, when he was actually being interviewed for the \u201cHannity\u201d show. AP reporter Calvin Woodward […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-92237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92237\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usa.timesofnews.com\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}