Clearing Up a Misattributed Quote About President Trump in ‘The Bulletin’

o read it on its face, The Bulletin’s June 20 article, “Plan to sell public lands sparks backlash in Central Oregon,” read like another fairly reported story that localizes the latest repercussions of the Trump Administration here in Central Oregon.

The piece covers the U.S. National Forest and Bureau of Land Management lands that would be for sale if a bill, authored by Utah Senator Mike Lee, were to pass in Congress. The story ran above the fold on page A1, written by Public Lands reporter Michael Kohn. To demonstrate the potential impact of such a sale, Kohn interviewed a variety of local stakeholders and politicians across the political spectrum.

But if you had read the early version that ran online and print, and you track with the political leanings of Deschutes County politicians, you might have spit up your coffee when you got two-thirds through the article.

Kohn reports:

“And in a somewhat surprise move, Deschutes County Commissioner Patti Adair — a conservative who served as Central Oregon coordinator for the Trump campaign in 2016 — has also come out against the plan, telling The Bulletin it would not benefit Central Oregon.

“(Trump) has already taken support away in terms of ranger jobs, fire jobs, that kind of thing. I think it would only benefit his cronies. His wealthy friends,” Adair said. “I just don’t believe anything he says, I don’t trust him. I think he should keep his hands to himself.”

Had Adair, a staunch conservative who represents the Republican Party on the Deschutes County Commission, had a complete change of political heart? And, from an editing standpoint, why didn’t Kohn open his story with this bombshell of a scoop?

Here’s the rub: Adair never made the comment.

Adair soon learned of the error when constituents sent her messages and phone calls, largely praising her unexpected defense of public lands. Kohn figured it out, too, after the story went to press, when he fact-checked himself by Googling Adair’s phone number. He realized it didn’t match the one he’d used for the interview.

A revised online version of the story omitted Adair’s quote altogether. At the end of the story, a correction read:

“Editor’s note: This article has been corrected. The original version attributed a quote speaking against the Trump administration’s plans to County Commissioner Patti Adair, but that comment was spoken by another person and misattributed due to a technology malfunction. The Bulletin regrets the error.”

The correction, with its vague phrasing that blamed a “technology malfunction,” raised more questions about what exactly happened.

On June 22, on the Bend subreddit, a top-1% poster with the handle FrizzyNow posted a link to the original story version and updated it to reflect the hazy correction.

Commenters doled out reactions.

That day, user HMWT chimed in: “Okay, I think The Bulletin owes its readers more details on what went wrong here. ‘Technological malfunction’ is a ridiculous explanation.”

FrizzyNow replied: “Human error is acceptable. Not taking responsibility for it is unacceptable, especially for journalists.”

JeanneDeBelleville responded: “Right? Sounds a ton like ‘a formatting error,’ as supposedly seen in the MAHA commission report.’

On another thread, Forsaken_Juice1859 wrote: “We were super suspicious too and predicted that an AI transcription attributed it to the wrong person.”

The comments together received nearly 80 combined up-votes. We received calls here in the newsroom, as well.

Fear not, Bend subredditers and Source readers alike. Here, the principal of Occam’s Razor leads us to the most plausible explanation. Yes, someone named Patti answered the call. And yes, this person was listed in Kohn’s contacts as Patti Adair. The call recipient’s last name, however, is not Adair.

In a call with the Source, Adair said “The Bulletin” had spoken to somebody else and said the reporter had a phone problem, and their phone said they were calling “Patti Adair.”

Reached by phone, Kohn corroborated the account, explaining that the snafu originated when his phone recently prompted him to consolidate contact info for “Patti Adair” and another phone number merely assigned to “Patti.” Assuming the two numbers pertained to an office number and a cell number for the county commissioner, Kohn amalgamated the info.

“That’s basically the source of the problem,” Kohn said.

“She obviously has strong viewpoints. She’s an intelligent woman who can hold her own in a conversation,” Kohn said, referring to the misidentified Patti. “The conversation didn’t really go deep enough for me to ask her about her role as commissioner. If it had gone there, I think it she would have said, ‘I think you have the wrong person.’ Then I would have said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry about this.’ But it didn’t go that way. When I asked about her Republican leanings, she said no one had ever called her a Republican before.’ I thought, ‘Did someone else pick up the phone?’”

Not trusting his instincts, Kohn went about reporting the story, calling commissioner Anthony DeBone and Matt Cyrus, a Deschutes County farmer. Kohn included Adair because he wanted to round out the otherwise mostly liberal-leaning views with a conservative one for the sake of balance.

Throughout our two conversations, Kohn was adamant that he’s never used A.I. to research, summarize, or author any article he’s written. “The Bulletin,” he added, only uses A.I. to craft SEO-friendly headlines, analyze page views, and transcribe long audio interviews — time-saving practices widely used here at the Source and presumably every newsroom in the country operating in 2025. Kohn also said that the Central Oregon News Guild, the union that “The Bulletin” employees formed in 2024, is introducing stringent anti-AI protections in its upcoming bargaining session with Mississippi-based Carpenter Media Group, which bought “The Bulletin” and other publications from EO Media, the Source reported on Oct. 30, 2024.

After realizing the flub, Kohn contacted both Pattis.

“I apologized to her,” Kohn said, referring to Patti, the social acquaintance he made about 12 years ago in town. “She was kind of baffled, like, ‘Why did this happen?’ She was kind of miffed by why I was asking her questions for a story because I never have called her like that before.”

Kohn also reported his error to Julie Johnson, the city editor at “The Bulletin,” and he added the correction to the article online.

“It’s kind of funny, but it’s not funny. It’s just a case of technology gone wrong,” Kohn said. “I guess I learned my lesson that my phone is not exactly doing things that I expect. But this is the world we lived in.”

[Correction: In a previous version of this story, Kohn was quoted as asking the misattributed Patti about “a Republican meeting,” not her “Republican leanings.” The error owes to a completely human misunderstanding. The Source regrets the error, yet appreciates the irony.]