Mag Says Article Comparing Donald Trump to Charles Manson ‘Did Not Meet Newsweek’s Editorial Standards’

Newsweek replaced a comparison it published between Donald Trump and the late murderer Charles Manson with an article not mentioning the president’s name.

An addendum to the article currently on the website reads: “An earlier version of this story did not meet Newsweek’s editorial standards and has been revised accordingly.”

But the revisions appear as a compete overhaul of the original article. The new piece and its antecedent read as completely different articles making different points.

At posting time, Newsweek did not respond to a Breitbart News query made early this afternoon regarding the specific reasons the publication bowdlerized the article.

Newsweek titled the Melissa Mathews piece that ran one week ago “How Murderer Charles Manson and Donald Trump Used Language to Gain Followers.” The article that replaced, titled “How Charles Manson Used Language to Gain Followers,” does not mention or even obliquely reference the president.

“Manson was able to speak in a way that engaged those who felt marginalized or alienated,” Matthews contends in both articles. But in the first article she subsequently quoted a former president of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Mark Smaller, saying: “Our current president speaks in an emotional or affective way to large numbers of people in our country who feel a kind of alienation or disconnection from the government.”

Newsweek erased the quote by Smaller, and much else, from the original article. Although the first piece insisted it did not represent a comparison between the man convicted of murdering Sharon Tate and eight other people and the elected president of the United States, the title and the content that followed indicated otherwise.

The change followed a Breitbart piece critical of the original Newsweek piece. Both pieces appeared on November 20, with the Newsweek posting its article at 3:43 p.m. The Breitbart piece generated more than 100 times the number of comments than the piece that appears at the Newsweek website and almost 9,000 shares on Facebook. Following outrage from Breitbart readers and others disgusted by the article, Newsweek opted to keep an altogether different version of that original piece on its site with an editor’s note rather than pull it entirely.