@ABC News continues to lie, this time privately to their friends in the press. This was a coordinated influence operation planted by our competition, not "premature publication". 7:01 AM October 7th, story goes live. Within minutes, dozens of high-profile commentators, politicians, and news outlets are sharing it with tens of millions of followers. We immediately contact ABC and demand they correct their false claims - after multiple rounds of refusal, they finally make a single one-word grammar edit. The editors stand by the reporting and insist the false claims are true. Finally, eight hours after I was forced to call them out publicly, they delete everything. The editors hide all the comments, the author deletes his X account, and the story is completely wiped from their website without any explanation, directly violating SPJ ethics standards and ABC's own internal rules. ABC is currently running a coverup operation, ignoring all of our requests for correction/retraction while telling their buddies to spread the word that this was nothing more than a CMS publication timeline error.