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Source snapshot Publisher wording captured Jul 23, 2026, 7:04 PM 5,611 normalized characters retained in this legacy snapshot; capture completeness was not recorded. Public display is limited to an excerpt.

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WATCH: ‘Shocking’ Ben Franklin smear leaves Smithsonian chief with ‘no regrets’

A Heritage Foundation expert called a Smithsonian exhibit "shocking" for suggesting Benjamin Franklin may have used electroshock on enslaved people.

Fox News Latest reporting 28 sentences analyzed 5,586 captured characters

The director of the country's premier American history museum said she has no regrets about any of the museum’s exhibits under her tenure after an expert confronted her with a "shocking" display that he said smeared founding father Benjamin Franklin.

Smithsonian National Museum of American History Director Anthea Hartig faced intense questioning from lawmakers during two Capitol Hill hearings this week.

The hearings followed a White House Domestic Policy Council report accusing the museum of using taxpayer dollars and its status as a world-renowned institution to advance a "radical activist ideology."

During a House hearing on Tuesday, Heritage Foundation expert Mike Gonzalez testified that a multiyear special exhibit titled "The Electric Dr.

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BOLD.news analysis

Origin wording grade

Grade B reflects 18/100 framing risk from loaded language, editorial voice; each finding below is tied to stored wording.

B 18/100 risk

Confidence: 84%
Format: opinion
Findings: 2
Method: origin-framing-v2

Outlet context is separate. right (+65, 60% confidence). This profile does not change the article grade.

Evidence behind the grade

Loaded languageheadline

+14 · 86% confidence

WATCH: ‘Shocking’ Ben Franklin smear leaves Smithsonian chief with ‘no regrets’

This wording can add emotional or evaluative force beyond the underlying event description.

Editorial voicebody

+4 · 68% confidence

But I don't have any regrets." Jack pressed further, asking, "Which mistakes would you say you've made?" To which Hartig responded, "There are always factual errors." "One of my favorite, currently," she went on, "is that one of our volunteers has pointed out that we've been mislabeling a coin in the American Presidency exhibit for years, and we were, of course, you know, slightly embarrassed about that, but we fixed it." Hartig became director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in February 2019.

The sentence states an evaluation in the narrator's voice instead of attributing it to a named source. The cue appears in attributed or quoted language, so its score is reduced.

Useful context, not penalties

Opinion format Argumentative wording is expected in this format, so narrator-voice and decision-pressure cues receive reduced weight.
Attributed claims Attribution helps readers distinguish a source's claim from the article narrator's own assertion.
Uncertainty qualifiers Qualifiers such as may, might, or reportedly are disclosed as technique but do not add framing-risk points by themselves.
Charged wording in quoted context The wording was preserved as context but excluded from the grade because it appeared in an attributed quote or a legal/allegation context.

What this grade does and does not mean

This grade evaluates wording and reader-steering cues, not factual accuracy.
The outlet's general profile is separate context and does not affect this article grade.
Potential omissions require comparison with other reporting and are not graded from one article alone.