SPECIAL REPORT: The Eight Worst ‘Fake News’ Stories of the Trump Years
By Rich Noyes | May 5, 2020 9:00 AM EDT
Journalists bristle when President Trump criticizes them as “fake news,†and they complain that such criticism erodes the public’s faith in the news media as an independent watchdog on the powerful.
But Trump’s critiques wouldn’t have nearly as much impact if news organizations actually acted like careful, professional, independent purveyors of fact. Instead, they too often behave as sloppy partisans, carelessly jumping on one false story after another if they think it will prove their larger narrative that the President is unfit for office.
Sometimes, the “fake news†is about a small detail that suggests a broader pattern: the Time magazine pool reporter who wrongly claimed on Twitter that Trump had removed a bust of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., from the Oval Office, perhaps hinting at a racial animus. In fact, the bust was right there, obscured from view by a Secret Service agent and a door.
Or it can be sheer sloppiness: ABC adorned two of its 2019 weekend newscasts with footage supposedly showing Kurds being bombed to oblivion after the President announced U.S. troops would leave Syria. The problem? The footage was taken at a Kentucky gun range two years earlier and had nothing to do with Trump, Syria or the Kurds.
Source URL:
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/rich-noyes/2020/05/05/special-report-eight-worst-fake-news-stories-trump-years
