Much blame is placed on President Donald Trump for his ongoing feud with the mainstream media. Every time he calls them out, it’s taken as an attack on the free press. But is using your constitutional freedom of speech really opposing the free press? Can the First Amendment actually be used to stop the First Amendment? This is the issue with the constant hyperbole from left-wing agitators.
The mainstream media has been caught with false information numerous times in just the past year alone, which has led President Trump and allies to label bad publications and networks as fake news. It’s happened a few times in just the last couple weeks, with the most recent involving the Washington Post.
Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel put out a picture of an empty arena with the comment “packed to the rafters,” a slight at the President.
The problem here is that the picture Weigel uses was taken hours before the President showed up, thus the lack of crowds. President Trump addressed it in a tweet of his own with pictures taken during his appearance, which do show a packed house.
Weigel deleted his original tweet. He then apologized to the President and said he was confused. While he deserves credit for actually issuing an apology, he should have better researched the issue in the first place. The mainstream media is often eager to provoke the President, as it was clear here. This isn’t about transparency at this point, it’s about running the score up in a personal fight between journalists and the President.
This is how things roll with the mainstream media as of late.
ABC News correspondent Brian Ross was suspended for publishing a story falsely claiming that former national security adviser Michael Flynn was directed by Trump to contact Russian officials during the campaign. ABC took a great deal of well-deserved heat for bumbling the story and mishandling the correction.
The error may have been an honest mistake, but Ross should have taken better care to vet his sources. The implications of the report were enormous. Flynn had just given into the Mueller investigation and Ross’s report would suggest that some bombshell information was coming.
It doesn’t just stop with these two news outlets though. President Trump’s favorite media adversary also was caught in a lie recently. CNN had misreported the date when Wikileaks contacted the Trump campaign about access to stolen documents. The implication of the original report was that the Trump campaign had been coordinating with Wikileaks, which was false.
CNN corrected the report, but did not discipline the reporters for the critical error.
This is all just an ongoing trend. Instead of working to be a credible network of legitimate journalists, the mainstream media is full of shock jocks who are stuck in a personal feud with the President of the United States. The result is careless reporting and bad information. With all of these errors across multiple networks, is it any wonder that the “fake news” label is used so frequently?
Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel is just another example. He’s not the first and certainly will not be the last to be caught reporting fake news, that’s for sure.
