TRUMP'S "FAKE NEWS AWARDS" ARE FAKE!

…This is how many of us look at the president

 

Fact Checkers at The Post do not award Pinocchio’s if a politician admits an error.

 

Well, Trump has finally published his Fake News Awards list through the Republican National Committee (RNC).  I had wondered how someone that lies an average of 5 ½ times every day, what would he put up as “Fake News” by the media.

 

As it turns out, what is listed on the RNC website for the awards isn’t those things that Trump lied about and then called the main-stream media's “Fake News”, it’s items that the media got wrong, but then came back and made the appropriate corrections.  But does it really count if the news organizations admit and correct their errors?

If you follow the Fact Checkers at The Post, you know that they do not award Pinocchio’s if a politician admits an 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 quickly acknowledged and corrected.

 

President Trump seldom, if ever, admits an error, even though he has made more than 2,000 false or misleading statements since the inauguration.

 

So, under that situation, here’s a basic assessment of these so called “awards”:

 

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

Krugman, of course, won the 2008 Nobel Prize for Economics and he is a newspaper columnist. So, first it’s bizarre to call an opinion “fake news” when it isn’t even news, but just an opinion. (BTW: Fact Checkers don’t fact-check opinion writers.) Krugman had written: “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 did not happened. So Krugman had 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.”

 

It is true that 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. It was a 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.”

 

In this case, other news organizations including The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and NBC News, immediately 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 a reference to a tweet by a reporter, which was quickly corrected. But do tweets count as “news”? Of course, Trump’s tweets do count as news, but this did not appear as a news article, and the correction came less than an hour after the original tweet. Here is how the correction came and it was quickly followed by an apology.

 

The Winston Churchill bust is back in the Oval Office

— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) January 21, 2017

 

Correction: The MLK bust is still in the Oval Office. It was obscured by an agent and door.

— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) January 21, 2017

 

Tweeting again: wh aide confirms the MLK bust is still there. I looked for it in the oval 2x & didn't see it. My apologies to my colleagues

— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) January 21, 2017

 

“5. Washington Post FALSELY reported the President’s massive sold-out rally in Pensacola, Florida was empty. Dishonest reporter showed picture of empty arena HOURS before crowd started pouring in.”

 

Again, another tweet. Again, quickly corrected, within minutes. This also did not result in a news article, except to say that the reporter apologized for the mistake.

 

“6. CNN FALSELY edited a video to make it appear President Trump defiantly overfed fish during a visit with the Japanese prime minister. Japanese prime minister actually led the way with the feeding.”

 

Again, this started as a tweet of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Trump tossing spoonfuls of fish food into a koi pond. What went viral was a clip of Trump appearing to pour his entire box of food into the pond.  As it turned out, Abe had gone first. It was probably how the video feeds were released to reporters. The CNN report noted: “The move got Trump some laughs, and a smile from Abe, who actually appeared to dump out his box of food ahead of Trump.”

 

“7. CNN FALSELY reported about Anthony Scaramucci’s meeting with a Russian.”

 

Another case when a reporting mistake led to dire consequences: CNN issued a correction, but three employees, including a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, were forced out. The RNC report does include a headline about the reporters resigning.

 

“8. Newsweek FALSELY reported that Polish First Lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda did not shake President Trump’s hand.”

 

Newsweek based its report on a brief clip of the meeting, in which Kornhauser-Duda appears to walk past Trump’s outstretched hand to shake Melania Trump’s hand. But when the extended clip was released, it showed that she shook Trump’s hand after shaking Melania’s hand. Newsweek corrected the story and Vanity Fair had made the same error.

 

“9. CNN FALSELY reported that former FBI Director James Comey would dispute President Trump’s claim that he was told he is not under investigation.”

 

Yes, CNN got this story wrong. It was also corrected once CNN realized its mistake: “The article and headline have been corrected to reflect that Comey does not directly dispute that Trump was told multiple times he was not under investigation in his prepared testimony released after this story was published.”

“10. The New York Times FALSELY claimed on the front page that the Trump administration had hidden a climate report.”

 

This was a major screw-up, as the report had been publicly available for seven months. The error was only half-heartedly acknowledged by the Times, which added a correction and this line:  “The report was uploaded to a nonprofit internet digital library in January but received little attention until it was published by The New York Times.” But that was not entirely correct either, as The Washington Post had written about it months earlier and not just on the front page.

“11. And lastly, but not least: “RUSSIA COLLUSION!” Russian collusion is perhaps the greatest hoax perpetrated on the American people. THERE IS NO COLLUSION!”

 

Special counsel Robert Mueller, appointed by the Trump administration, continues his investigation, as do congressional committees led by Republicans.  There is no conclusion about Russian collusion or obstruction of justice.

 

So, based on all of Trump’s bogus “Fake News”, here are the results:

 

At least eight of the “Fake News” winners resulted in corrections, with two reports prompting suspensions or resignations. Two of the winners were just tweets that were quickly corrected and never resulted in a real news article. One wasn’t even “news” and was an opinion article in which the author later retracted his prediction.

 

As usual, Trump’s fake news is totally Fake!

 

Copyright G.Ater  2018