MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow contradicted her show’s own graphic running along the bottom of the screen while talking about special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report.

The show’s graphic — known as a chyron — accurately stated that Attorney General William Barr was being assisted by Mueller to work through the lengthy document and provide redactions where needed. But Maddow told MSNBC viewers a different story.

“BARR: SPECIAL COUNSEL IS ASSISTING WITH REDACTIONS,” was seen at the bottom of the screen, while Maddow said: “It is hard to believe that they’d leave the newly appointed 68-year-old Attorney General William Barr to himself [to] personally pick through the report to try to figure out what mentions in this 400-page report might pertain to open cases."

“They wouldn’t leave that to Barr to do that, Mueller would have done that. Mueller’s team would have done that as part of producing anything that they handed over outside their own offices. They’ve done that with every other document they have produced,” Maddow said. “… But William Barr says it’s taking him a really long time because he’s having to do all that himself.”

Aaron Mate, of the left-wing magazine The Nation, tweeted a clip of the video with the caption: “Tip for @Maddow: if you're going to keep misleading your audience, make sure your producers aren't correcting you in real-time. Here, the chyron accurately states Friday's news Mueller is 'assisting' Barr w/ redactions. Meanwhile, @Maddow is falsely claiming the exact opposite.”

[Opinion: You will not get what you want from the 'Mueller Report']


Barr released a four-page summary of Mueller’s report, which concluded that President Trump did not collude with Russia. Congress is eagerly awaiting the release of the report, although Barr and Mueller are parsing through the document to redact sensitive information related to grand jury information and ongoing legal matters that the report might contain.

Fox News had its own mishap with chyrons Sunday, when a “Fox and Friends” segment ran a graphic saying the U.S. had cut aid to “3 Mexican countries" — but in that case, the on-air journalists were right, and the chyron-writers wrong.