An article from Business Insider is being mocked and ridiculed after critics online figured that it was premised upon an embarrassing error.
The article was written by real estate reporter Kelsey Neubauer and claimed that more people had moved out of Florida than either California or New York. Unfortunately for BI and Neubauer, the writer appeared to misread population statistics. Florida has seen the greatest population boom among all 50 states.
Some immediately pounced on the headline to falsely mock Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and his policies.
“What’s that sound? it’s the rush of people leaving florida due to the unaffordable cost of living and the sound of desantis’ biggest talking point going poof at the same time,” read one tweet.
Others noted the error and lambasted the news outlet.
“How is this even possible? They misread the data, yes, but how did someone not say, at the first stage, ‘quite obviously, this isn’t true’?” responded writer Charles C. W. Cooke.
“Oof, that’s gonna be a retraction,” replied Jeremy Redfern, press secretary for DeSantis. “I made sure to email her boss’ boss’ boss.
“This was a super-eager, hasty, and sloppy attempt at dunking on DeSantis by trying to debunk his state’s track record of attracting people through policy and governance,” tweeted writer Ranjit Singh.
“I am not sure what their editorial process is at @thisisinsider — but an error of this magnitude obviously should have been caught by an editor well before publication. This calls into question the accuracy of all their real estate reporting,” responded Christina Pushaw, the rapid response director for DeSantis.
“I am embarrassed for you. I’d say to not quit your day job, but this is your day job. oof,” read another tweet.
After several hours the entire article had to be re-written, and a correction was issued.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct an error regarding Census data. In 2021, an estimated 469,577 people moved out of Florida, while 674,740 people relocated to the state. An earlier version of the story switched those numbers.
Here’s more about Florida’s population boom:
Florida attracting more new residents than any other U.S. statewww.youtube.com
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