‘Correction of the day’: CNN says congressman fled office with CROWBAR amid Capitol riot, clarifies it was actually an energy bar

CNN has corrected an article about the Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol last week, after dramatically claiming Rep. Ted Lieu fled his office with a “crowbar” during the incident. He had actually grabbed an energy bar.

In the correction, CNN admitted that a “previous version of this story misstated” that the Democratic congressman had “grabbed a crowbar before leaving his office.” 

“He grabbed a ProBar energy bar,” it then clarified.

The correction, of course, drastically changed the tone of the sentence, with most readers having previously assumed that Lieu happened to have a crowbar at hand – and grabbed it for self-defence purposes against violent rioters. 

CNN’s blunder hit social media on Thursday, with users questioning how such a large national news outlet could mistake an innocent snack for a potentially deadly weapon.

“I'd like to think that, had I reported this story, that I would stop and think: Wait, why would Ted Lieu have a crowbar in his office?”tweeted Washington Post congressional reporter Mike DeBonis.

“His arm was the weapon after that probar,”joked one Twitter user, while another commented, “Stop, I have a ProBar and I know how to use it!”

Rather than facing rioters with a deadly weapon, the CNN article goes on to explain that the congressman wandered the halls of the Capitol – ProBar in hand  – and then hunkered down in a colleague's office, where they watched the day's historic events unfold.

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