Washington Post Responds: Fact-checking President Trump’s ‘Fake News Awards’

[SirLinksALot]

SOURCE: WASHINGTON POST

URL: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/01/17/fact-checking-president-trumps-fake-news-awards/?utm_term=.22ea3466fc2e

By Glenn Kessler


The “Fake News Awards” announced on the Republican National Committee website and touted by President Trump pose a conundrum: Does it really count if the news organization admits error?

Regular readers of The Fact Checker know that we do not award Pinocchios if a politician admits error. Everyone makes mistakes — and the point is not to play gotcha. News organizations operate in a competitive arena and mistakes are bound to be made. The key test is whether an error is acknowledged and corrected.

President Trump almost never admits error, even as he has made more than 2,000 false or misleading statements. So with that context, here’s an assessment of the “awards”:

“1. The New York Times’ Paul Krugman claimed on the day of President Trump’s historic, landslide victory that the economy would never recover.”

Krugman, of course, is a columnist. So it’s a bit odd to feature an opinion as fake news when it’s not really news, just opinion. (We don’t fact-check opinions at The Fact Checker.) Krugman wrote: “We are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight. I suppose we could get lucky somehow. But on economics, as on everything else, a terrible thing has just happened.”

Clearly that prediction has not happened. So Krugman looks like he has egg on his face. But it turns out he retracted the prediction just three days later. “It’s at least possible that bigger budget deficits will, if anything, strengthen the economy briefly,” he wrote.

“2. ABC News’ Brian Ross CHOKES and sends markets in a downward spiral with false report.”

Ross got his timeline wrong, claiming that former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who had just pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, was expected to testify that Trump was a candidate when he instructed Flynn to contact Russian officials. Big mistake — but ABC News corrected the error, and Ross was suspended for the “serious mistake.”

“3. CNN FALSELY reported that candidate Donald Trump and his son Donald J. Trump, Jr. had access to hacked documents from WikiLeaks.”

Here’s a case where other news organizations — The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and NBC News — quickly reported that CNN had gotten it wrong. It turned out that the sender of the email in question was notifying the Trumps of already public documents.

“The new details appear to show that the sender was relying on publicly available information,” CNN admitted. “The new information indicates that the communication is less significant than CNN initially reported.”

“4. TIME FALSELY reported that President Trump removed a bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. from the Oval Office.”

This is is reference to a tweet by a reporter — which was quickly corrected. Do tweets really count as “news”? This did not appear as a news article — and the correction came less than an hour after the original tweet. And the correction was quickly followed by an apology.

(EXCERPT) CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE REST....

[SirLinksALot]

THE WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE CONCLUDES THUSLY....

The Bottom Line

To sum up, at least eight of the “Fake News” winners resulted in corrections, with two reports prompting suspensions or resignations. Two of the winners were simply tweets that were quickly corrected and never resulted in news articles. One was an opinion article in which the author later retracted his prediction.


Let’s it put it this way: If the president admitted error as frequently, he would earn far fewer Pinocchios.

[Frank Cannon]

Doesn't Glenn Kessler routinely get called out for fabricating bullshit.

[Emjay]

THE WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE CONCLUDES THUSLY....

The Bottom Line

To sum up, at least eight of the “Fake News” winners resulted in corrections, with two reports prompting suspensions or resignations. Two of the winners were simply tweets that were quickly corrected and never resulted in news articles. One was an opinion article in which the author later retracted his prediction.


Let’s it put it this way: If the president admitted error as frequently, he would earn far fewer Pinocchios.

So, if a columnist for, say, The New York Times, lies, it's okay because the Times is not responsible.

If you put out a big lie and then deny or retract a couple of days later, it's okay.

AND, finally, Trump should apologize whether he lies or not.

Is that about it?

[WingNot]

Wow,  The Wapo could spin a turd filled baby diaper to make it sound clean.

[jmyrlefuller]

My favorite was "tweets don't count."