New York Times, Washington Post, NBC Correct Their Reports About Giuliani's Contact With FBI

On Saturday, the Washington Post, New York Times, and NBC News corrected earlier reports that said former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani was directly warned by the FBI that he was the target of a Russian disinformation campaign. This comes after federal investigators searched Giuliani's office and home Thursday in an investigation tied to a criminal probe of the former mayor's business dealings in Ukraine. The Washington Post, citing anonymous sources, was the first to report on Thursday that Giuliani was warned that he was the target of a Russian influence campaign last year, and that One America News Network (OANN) was given a similar warning. On Saturday, the Post and the Times added an editor's note correcting or removing assertions that OANN and Giuliani received the warnings; NBC said that "as a result" the "premise and headline" of its story had been "changed to reflect the corrected information." Giuliani called out the three newsrooms on Twitter, and challenged them to reveal their sources. Each outlet received criticism from across the political spectrum for the mistake. CNN called the corrections "black eyes to the newsrooms which have aggressively reported on Giuliani's contacts with Ukrainians." Right-rated outlets tended to focus on the details of the corrections, while some voices from the right said the story pointed to wider issues with outlets from the left rushing to publish anonymous sources with partisan agendas.