Donald Trump is selling the news over Twitter—and everyone's buying

It took American media outlets two hours into the 2017 work-year to bungle coverage of Donald Trump.

On Tuesday morning, the president-elect fired off a few tweets on the recent move by Congress to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics. Monday's surprise vote yielded loud criticism that the Republicans controlling Congress acted with the intent of making it far more difficult to find and prosecute corruption among its members.

Here's Trump's response:

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Trump's negative tone regarding the vote's timing quickly led to media outlets claiming Trump had come out strongly against the move.

• The New York Times: Trump had "rebuked" House Republicans for the vote.

• The Hill: "Trump torches GOP for weakening ethics watchdog."

• West Wing Report: "Slams."

• The Associated Press: "Questions."

• Politico: Trump "tweets disapproval" of the move.

• NBC News: "Criticizes."

• CBS News: "Bashes."

CNN was closer to Trump's actual language, quoting part of the second Tweet but still mentioning that Trump had criticized the move itself. CNN later added that House Speaker Paul Ryan's support for the vote represented the "first high-profile break with Trump this year."

ABC News went with a similar tact, and Fox News went with the vague but not entirely wrong angle of "Trump takes a swipe..."

Props to NPR and the Wall Street Journal, which both said exactly what happened, with: "Questions timing."

We have winners:

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For the sake of clarity (and accuracy): Trump pointed to a problem with the timing of the move. He didn't oppose the measure itself, adding that the office had been "unfair."

Still, the notion that Trump would—in any way—criticize the GOP-led vote was enough to send various media outlets into a tizzy. Plenty of journalists pointed out the problem with the characterization of Trump's tweets, with politics reporter Maggie Haberman of the Times going as far as comparing the situation to how Trump was covered during the election.

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How to cover Trump—and in particular, his propensity to tweet whatever's on his mind—has proven itself a challenge for journalists, and one that's only rising in difficulty. During the election, Trump's Twitter feed provided mostly distractions from other topics.

Now, the president-elect has demonstrated a willingness to use Twitter as a way to take policy stances, and even tweet about sensitive topics (like, say, North Korea's nuclear weapons program).

Trump's tweets on Monday morning represented his first public response to the ethics committee vote. In its wake have been an abundance of headlines that have him coming out against the vote, when in reality, he absolutely did no such thing. It's all the more important to understand correctly with Trump's "drain the swamp" slogan beginning to rival "make America great again" among his supporters.

Then, in the early afternoon, news broke that Republicans were going to undo the changes they had made.

It made for an easy narrative.

Shot:

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Chaser:

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And scene.