Did Washington Times have “President Gore” headline in 2000? Fact Check

A photo alleges to show a Washington Times front page with the headline “President Gore”, and is being used by many Republicans to demonstrate that the media doesn’t get to decide when a candidate wins an election and that they can get it wrong.

This fact check is about the legitimacy of the Washington Times headline specifically.

FALSE

An example from social media.

It has been a longstanding tradition during the end of elections for many media outlets – using their data analysis teams – to “project” a winner of a presidential election. And it has been a tradition that both US political parties have used to provide an unofficial closure to the election, since the winner of the election isn’t “official” until many weeks after election day, regardless of how close a particular race was.

However this tradition has been criticised by Republicans in 2020 who have claimed that the media is trying to “select” the president by projecting a winner. It should, of course, be noted that this tradition has been used by both political parties in the past who have both used it as a barometer as to when they progress to the next unofficial stages of the election process – a congratulatory phone call from the losing candidate followed by a concession speech and the beginning of the peaceful transition of power.

But in 2020, amid accusations by President Trump of widespread voter fraud that resulted in the election being “stolen” from him, many have claimed that the media is trying to determine the winner of the election by continuing to project the winner. Most popularly, the image above was published on Twitter by Tim Murtaugh from the Trump 2020 presidential campaign (who subsequently deleted the tweet) who notes that the media “doesn’t select the President”.

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The tweet shows an apparent Washington Times headline titled “President Gore” following the exceptionally close election between George W Bush and Vice President Al Gore in the year 2000.

Of course Murtaugh is correct in his statement that the media doesn’t select a president, and neither do the media decide when a candidate officially wins the presidency. However the example Murtaugh used to demonstrate his point is flawed, since it shows a digitally manipulated headline from the Washington Times.

The headline, which reads “President Gore” with the tagline “Florida pushes Gore over the top with bare majority” was used by Murtaugh to demonstrate that the media doesn’t pick the winner and that they can get it wrong. The flaw, however, is that such a headline never existed.

Firstly, no one has been able to produce such a copy of the paper. Given its historic nature, one would imagine many would have saved copies of it, yet the only versions of it are digital screenshots.

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Secondly, the Washington Times themselves has said it is fake in a tweet.

And thirdly, the image itself was first uploaded on DeviantArt, a site for graphic artists, in February 2010, by user Emperor Norton I, as seen here.

As such we rank this headline as false.