Reporters created a false narrative this week about 2016 presidential candidate Rand Paul, suggesting on social media that the Kentucky senator had shrugged off a question about workplace protections for members of the LGBT community.

On Wednesday, during a campaign stop at Drake University, Paul took time to answer students' questions. One attendee asked the senator about discrimination in the workplace against members of the LGBT community.

"Do you think an employer should be able to fire an LGBT employee because that person is LGBT?" the attendee asked.

Related Story: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2574118/

Paul responded, "I think, really, the things you do in your house, we could just leave those in your house and they wouldn't have to be part of the workplace, to tell you the truth."

"These are very difficult decisions on what you decide will be employers' decisions and not. And it really isn't so much about that question as it is about — it sets up a classification, or a class of people, who can now sue. You see what I mean? So what happens is, it sets up a whole industry for people who want to sue," he added. "So if you happen to be gay and you get fired, now you have a reason you can sue them. But it's almost impossible sometimes. People don't put up a sign and say, 'I'm firing you because you're gay.' It's something that's very much disputed. And so I don't know that we need to keep adding to different classifications to say the government needs to be involved in the hiring and firing."

He explained that although there are still big questions that need to be answered regarding the rights of employers and employees, society is moving quickly towards greater acceptance of the LGBT community. So rather than rely on the government to intercede on behalf of one group, evolving cultural norms could very well answer the question of anti-LGBT discrimination, Paul seemed to suggest.

"I think society is rapidly changing. If you are gay, there are plenty of places that will hire you. I would say the vast majority of corporations already privately have manuals, or work manuals, that say that they don't discriminate in any way," he said.

Reporters responded to Paul's remarks by tweeting out only fragments of his full answer, and focusing especially hard on his conclusion.

"Rand Paul, asked whether employers [should] be able to fire LGBT workers, says, 'If you are gay, there are plenty of places that will hire you,'" the Los Angeles Times' Seema Mehta tweeted, reducing the entirety of Paul's answer into something where he seemingly shrugged at the idea of workplace discrimination.

Her tweet appeared before any video or transcript of the Drake University event were made available. But the absence of the full context didn't stop other reporters from weighing in on what Paul supposedly said.

Fellow L.A. Times colleague Matt Pearce responded to Mehta's tweet by commenting, "Imagine replacing 'gay' with almost any other description of a person."

MSNBC's Benjy Sarlin was incredulous.

"So the Rand Paul solution to LGBT worker protections appears to be applying 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' to the entire economy," he said. "Look, straight people, just never mention your spouse at work ever and no one will have any problems. Leave your home life at home."

Time magazine's Phil Elliott did a better job than Mehta of reporting on the context of Paul's response, but he also contributed to the false narrative by focusing mostly on the "there are plenty of places that will hire you" line.

Out of all the quotes tweeted by Elliott, he led off with this: "Asked about anti-discrimination policies for LGBT workers, Rand Paul says if people kept their home life at home, it wouldn't be an issue." He immediately followed with a tweet that read, "Rand Paul on LGBT workers losing their jobs: 'If you are gay, there are plenty of places that will hire you.'"

Elliott sent out additional quotes from Paul's response, but only after he had highlighted the senator's remarks on employment and the LGBT community.

Unfortunately for the Kentucky senator, and despite that the event's footage has been made available online, it doesn't look like the storyline that he supposedly shrugged off workplace discrimination is going to go away.

The Hill followed Mehta's lead and published a story titled, "Paul: LGBT people should keep their private lives out of the workplace."

And the narrative had spread outside media circles. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton's social media team saw an opportunity to boost her standing in the LGBT community, and they acted accordingly:

The feeling when a GOP candidate says it's acceptable to be fired for being gay. https://t.co/cF9mw5k8fq pic.twitter.com/cYFvcW27mQ — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 14, 2015

But not everyone in media felt the same about Paul's answer. The Huffington Post's Sam Stein, for example, conceded after he had watched the video that the senator's comments were not as nearly as controversial as initially claimed.

"Rand Paul's answer on LGBT protections in the workplace was much more thoughtful than what I [re-tweeted]," Stein said.