Rex Tillerson, Trump's meeting with Putin, and how the media misleads rather than informs
by Eddie Scarry
| January 14, 2019 12:50 PM
The way the report on President Trump’s attempts to “conceal†interactions with Russian President Vladimir Putin has evolved in just one day is a perfect case study in how media sloppiness and imprecision create false stories.
The Washington Post reported Sunday that Trump “has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations†with Putin, including “taking possession of the notes of his own interpreter†on “at least one occasion†and telling her not to discuss the meeting with others.
This sounds profound and troubling, until you consider a key detail: Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was present for the 2017 meeting in Hamburg, Germany, where the interpreter was supposedly asked to hand over her notes.
Post reporter Greg Miller noted as much, writing that after the Helsinki meeting the American interpreter for that one “could be seen emerging from the meeting with pages of notes.†And though there was no formal readout about the details of that meeting, the report doesn’t explicitly say what happened with those notes, if anything at all.
And yet, reiterations of the Post’s report by other media outlets neglect to include this context, putting forth only the most salacious bit about Trump taking his interpreter’s notes.
more
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/rex-tillerson-trumps-meeting-with-putin-and-how-the-media-misleads-rather-than-informs
