The Poynter Institute, whi the world’s leading journalism “instructor, convener and resource for anyone who aspires to engage and inform citizens,” touches every American journalist in mainstream media — and most of the world’s – in various ways.
It happens through its control over the standard curriculum, school instruction and influence on journalism schools and within the industry. On its website, Poynter claims:
We teach leadership, ethical decision-making and fact-checking; we teach editing, writing, reporting and digital media skills; we teach those in broadcast, print, online and mobile; we teach those trying to remake their organizations and those trying to remake their journalistic skills set.
Being a “leader” in journalism, Poynter felt the need to do what most news organizations do this time of year; produce a year-end list of the top something or other — in this case it’s the “Top media corrections of 2017.”
There’s a long tradition in the news business of publishing year-end wrap-up stories as the year draws to a close. These stories can be light or serious. Sometimes they’re interesting, sometimes a waste of space .
But Poynter blamed Donald Trump for turning what “used to be a generally light-hearted column about the most outrageous corrections issued by media organizations over the past 12 months” into something less fun.
In doing so, Poynter equated fake news stories produced by news organizations with actual neglect if not actual malice (CNN’s report that Donald Trump Jr. received advance access to WikiLeaks information, ABC News’s fabrication that former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn would testify that Mr. Trump had instructed his team to meet with Russians prior to the election ) with real mistakes caused by haste, sloppiness, oversight or just outright bad luck (the Dallas Morning News referring to milk cows as heifers). And in doing so, Poynter has created fake news.
The fabrication by ABC News’ Brian Ross is far different from using the wrong bovine agricultural terminology. Poynter is justifying fake news by major media organizations when it compares the two.
When you combine Poynter’s point with recent protests made by CNN’s Jim Acosta to Trump spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders that journalists are just making “honest mistakes,” it appears the MSM have begun a concerted effort to try and regain its lost credibility.
‘Fake News’ and Fake News
Are Americans getting fed up with “fake news?” A Tuesday story in The Hill about a recently-conducted Marist poll gives the impression that Americans are — but not fake news as put out by the mainstream media.
No, according to the poll, Americans are becoming fed up with the use of the phrase “fake news.”
Marist claims that “fake news” is now the second-most annoying word or phrase in casual conversation. It’s behind the word “whatever” in its level of annoyance, which retains the title of most annoying for its 8th straight year.
But if you look at Marist’s methodology, what their poll shows may not be what it’s touted to be. In other words, it may be fake news.
In conducting its poll, Marist gave respondents a list of six words or phrases to rate – words or phrases that Marist pollsters consider annoying. They are: Whatever, Fake news, No offense, Literally, You know what I mean, and Unsure.
From those alone respondents could choose.
So “fake news” was chosen by 23 percent. But that means that 77 percent of respondents thought that one of the other response choices was even more annoying. Who knows what would have made the list above “fake news” — or even “whatever” for that matter – if respondents had been allowed to choose their own “most annoying word or phrase?”
It Was Irresistible
The Hill couldn’t pass up an opportunity to criticize Mr. Trump and point out that he’s using the term to deflect from criticism by the MSM (as if they are not publishing fake news); or to take a shot at Fox News by pointing out the results of an unrelated Rasmussen poll.
But, whatever.
Lying Liars and Liars Who Lie
Politicians lie. It’s in the job description. Second nature. How else to explain how a politician can stand up during a campaign and tell you that he/she is the best man/woman for the office being sought while we all know there are dozens available who are more intelligent, who are more experienced, who are more educated, who will work harder and who are more passionate?
Politicians are nothing more than good sales people. Their biggest qualification is they do a better job of pitching their product (themselves) than their competitors and conning others out of their money.
Oh, and some of them get more favorable press, which helps. Hence The New York Times and its “exposé” comparing Mr. Trump’s lies to Barack Obama’s. According to The Times, Mr. Trump has lied more in 10 months than Mr. Obama lied in his whole eight-year term. The Times concluded that Mr. Obama only told six lies in his first year – and only 18 in eight years – whereas Mr. Trump has already lied 103 times.
According to The Times:
After we published a list of President Trump’s lies this summer, we heard a common response from his supporters. They said, in effect: “Yes, but if you made a similar list for previous presidents, it would be just as bad.”
We’ve set out to make that list. Here, you will find our attempt at a comprehensive catalog of the falsehoods that Barack Obama told while he was president. (We also discuss George W. Bush below, although the lack of real-time fact-checking during his presidency made a comprehensive list impossible.)
We applied the same conservative standard to Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump, counting only demonstrably and substantially false statements. The result: Mr. Trump is unlike any other modern president. He seems virtually indifferent to reality, often saying whatever helps him make the case he’s trying to make.
Separately, we have updated our earlier list of Mr. Trump’s lies, which also includes repeated falsehoods. This article counts only distinct falsehoods for both Mr. Trump and Mr. Obama.
If we had used a less strict standard, Mr. Trump would look even worse by comparison. He makes misleading statements and mild exaggerations – about economic statistics, his political opponents and many other subjects – far more often than Mr. Obama. We left out any statement that could be plausibly defended even if many people would disagree with the president’s interpretation. We also left out modest quantitative errors, such as Trump’s frequent imprecision with numbers.
We have used the word “lies” again here, as we did in our original piece. If anything, though, the word is unfair to Mr. Obama and Mr. Bush. When they became aware that they had been saying something untrue, they stopped doing it. Mr. Obama didn’t continue to claim that all Americans would be able to keep their existing health insurance under Obamacare, for example, and Mr. Bush changed the way he spoke about Iraq’s weapons capability.
Mr. Trump is different. When he is caught lying, he will often try to discredit people telling the truth, be they judges, scientists, F.B.I. or C.I.A. officials, journalists or members of Congress.
Mr. Trump is trying to make truth irrelevant. It is extremely damaging to democracy, and it’s not an accident. It’s core to his political strategy.
As for Mr. Obama: His falsehoods tended to be attempts to make his own policies look better or to overstate a problem he was trying to solve. In a few cases, they seemed to be careless exaggerations he avoided repeating.
Over all, Mr. Obama rarely told demonstrable untruths as president. And he appears to have become more careful over time. We counted six straight-up falsehoods in his first year in office. Across his entire second four-year term, we counted the same number, six, only one of which came in his final year in office.
In all, we found 18 different bald untruths from Mr. Obama during his presidency. Mr. Trump told his 18th separate untruth in his third full week in office, and his list keeps growing.
So for The Times, a lie is not a lie if Mr. Obama told it because, no matter how many times he told it, once he stopped telling it, it was no longer a lie; like “if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor,” and “affordable healthcare,” and “Assad used poison on his own people,” and “Benghazi was caused by a video.”
Or, as the left-wing Politifact reminds us, Mr. Obama had at least five lies in his pocket between Election Day and Inauguration Day, and another 18 before January 2009 rolled around.
Which is far short of the number of time The Times has lied in covering Mr. Trump’s first year, just on the subject of so-called Russia-Trump collusion.
But, whatever.
Mr. Barber wrote this essay for www.personalliberty.com