Posted on 07/07/2019 1:21:25 PM PDT by Syncro
We the media have “fact-checked” President Trump like we have fact-checked no other human being on the planet—and he’s certainly given us plenty to write about. That’s probably why it’s so easy to find lists enumerating and examining his mistakes, missteps and “lies.”
Our repeat mistakes involve declaring that Trump’s claims are “lies” when they are matters of opinion, or when the truth between conflicting sources is unknowable; taking Trump’s statements and events out of context; reporting secondhand accounts against Trump without attribution as if they’re established fact; relying on untruthful, conflicted sources; and presenting reporter opinions in news stories—without labeling them as opinions. What’s worse, we defend ourselves by trying to convince the public that our mistakes are actually a virtue because we (sometimes) correct them. Or we blame Trump for why we’re getting so much wrong. It’s a little bit like a police officer taking someone to jail for DUI, then driving home drunk himself: he may be correct to arrest the suspect, but he should certainly know better than to commit the same violation.
2. Oct. 1, 2016:
“The truth is, formerly well-respected, top news organizations are making repeat, unforced errors in numbers that were unheard of just a couple of years ago.”
Road apples. The media have been shameless, malicious, leftwad liars since at least the Nixon administration.
The only reason they were “well-respected” is because we had no Internet or other means of exposing them.
I’ve read about ten pages of the list. The majority of the entries are obvious lies, not errors.
It’s intellectually dishonest for Atkinsson to label these “mistakes”.
She’s smarter than that. Disappointing.
She’s being too kind.
They weren’t mistakes.
They were deliberate deceptions in order to discredit President Trump.
She’s a professional reporter. No dishonesty. Just the facts.
OTOH, an opinion writer would add 2 + 2 and conclude the upper echelons of the executive branch agencies deserve the fate of Mussolini.
AP’s Laurie Kellman and Jonathan Drew reported that a new report showed trust in the media had fallen during the Trump presidency.
But the report that AP cited was actually over a year old and was conducted while Obama was president.
40. Feb. 2, 2018:
AP’s Eric Tucker, Mary Clare Jalonick and Chad Day reported that ex-British spy Christopher Steele’s opposition research against Trump was initially funded by a conservative publication: the Washington Free Beacon.
AP corrected its story because Steele only came on the project after Democrats began funding it.
The New York Times’ Adam Goldman, NBC’s Noreen O’Donnell and AP’s Deb Riechmann reported that Trump’s pick for CIA Director, Gina Haspel, had waterboarded a particular Islamic extremist terrorist dozens of time at a secret prison; and that she had mocked his suffering.
In fact, Haspel wasn’t assigned to the prison until after the detainee left. ProPublica originally reported the incorrect details in Feb. 2017.
1-999 twisting slight exaggerations or intentionally ironic hyperbole into a lie
The New York Times’ Julie Hirschfeld Davis, AP, CNN’s Oliver Darcy and others excerpted a Trump comment as if he had referred to immigrants or illegal immigrants generally as “animals.”
Most outlets corrected their reports later to note that Trump had specifically referred to members of the murderous criminal gang MS-13.
49. May 28, 2018
The New York Times’ Magazine editor-in-chief Jake Silverstein and CNN’s Hadas Gold shared a story with photos of immigrant children in cages as if they were new photos taken under the Trump administration.
The article and photos were actually taken in 2014 under the Obama administration.
The UK Telegraph apologizes for all the facts it got wrong in a Jan. 19 article criticizing the First Lady.
A week before Trump was elected, Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church in Mississippi was torched and the words “Vote Trump” found painted on the outside. The mayor condemned the incident as a hate crime and stated it was “an attack on the black church and the black community.” However, police later arrested a black church member for the arson. They say the man staged the fire to look like an attack by Trump supporters. Even today, some of the corrected news reports retain headlines seeming to blame Trump.
The day after Trump was elected, an incident at Elon University in North Carolina made national news. Hispanic students found a “hateful note” written on a classroom whiteboard reading, “Bye Bye Latinos.” After the story made news, it was learned that the message was written by “a Latino student who was upset about the results of the election.”
Also the day after Trump was elected, a gay man — reportedly a filmmaker — claimed that homophobic Trump supporters smashed his face with a bottle outside a bar in Santa Monica, Calif. A bloody photo was posted on Twitter, and he was said to have been treated at a local hospital. Police investigated the media reports. They said no complaint was ever filed, there was no evidence of a crime, and a check of local hospitals showed no victim in such an incident.
The week after Trump’s election, a Muslim student at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, claimed Trump supporters pulled off her head covering, and assaulted and robbed her. She later admitted fabricating the story.
A month after Trump’s election, a Muslim-American woman claimed Trump supporters tried to steal her headwear and harassed her on the New York City subway. She ultimately was arrested after confessing she made up the whole story.
Now available: Sharyl's latest book Smear. Five stars!
Watch Sharyl host "Full Measure," a Sunday morning talk show on the Sinclair network. More info.
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Come on... we all ‘get’ what she’s really saying...
Thanks for the post. Sharyl Attkisson is a truth warier. It should be noted that the WaPo and NY Times won a Pulizter prize for their coverage of the Russian collusion hoax.
Several news outlets seemed to be victimized by a bad case of wishful thinking when they reported that President Trump’s Fourth of July celebration did not draw crowds. One analysis incorrectly claimed there were “small crowds.”
The Guardian featured a photo of an empty podium in Washington D.C. prior to the celebration and claimed the White House was “struggling” to draw crowds.
However, by any factual assessment, the crowds were, in fact, huge. That’s in spite of the bad weather.
I suspect she is being cautious, to avoid being accused of libel. She might then have to defend herself legally. The left will use any ploy.
I consider Attkisson the very best out there, and one of the few journalists whom I will give the benefit of the doubt.
She has already suffered plenty for trying to get the truth out, and has had to spend considerable money of her own.
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