The Associated Press deleted a post it had made on X that claimed GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance urged the public to accept school shootings as a “fact of life.”
The news service ran the partial quote after the Ohio Senator spoke in the wake of the massacre at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga., which left four people dead and nine wounded on Wednesday
“JD Vance says school shootings are a ‘fact of life,’ calls for better security,” the AP posted to the social media platform on Thursday.
Several left-leaning media outlets also ran similar headlines, including the The New York Times, which published an article with the headline: “Vance Calls School Shootings a Grim ‘Fact of Life’ as He Backs Increased Security.”
The AP’s post on X was soon flooded with angry responses which accused the news agency of taking his comments out of context.
Critics noted that Vance’s full quote was: “I don’t like that this is a fact of life. But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets. And we have got to bolster security at our schools.”
In a follow-up X post, the AP amended its headline to read: “JD Vance says he laments that school shootings are a ‘fact of life’ and says the US needs to harden security to prevent more carnage like the shooting this week that left four dead in Georgia.”
In the same thread, the AP clarified its initial statement. “This post replaces an earlier post that was deleted to add context to the partial quote from Vance.”
Zaid Jilani, an independent journalist, posted an item in response to the original AP link urging the wire service to change the headline.
“I used to think of the AP as a credible, down the middle just put out the news kind of place,” Jilani wrote on X.
“These kinds of stories where they’re engaged in this kind of clickbait…is the AP just a tabloid now? That was very unprofessional.”
The Post has sought comment from AP.
William Martin, a spokesperson for Vance, blasted the AP, telling Fox News Digital: “This is yet another case of the fake news media brazenly lying about a Republican politician.”
“Senator Vance said exactly the opposite of what the Associated Press claimed,” Martin told Fox News Digital, adding: “It should come as no surprise that the AP lost any and all credibility it had years ago, because they will lie about literally anything in order prop up the Democrats.”
Martin said that Vice President Kamala Harris “has called for all police officers to be removed from schools, putting children all over America at risk.”
“It’s yet another example of how Kamala Harris’s weak, failed, and dangerously liberal agenda makes her unfit for office,” Martin said.
The Post has sought comment from the Harris-Walz campaign.