Trump Presidency: The Press Gets It Wrong
Sloppy reporting is not new. There has always been corner-cutting in journalism. There is a new genre of lazy reporting in the Trump era, however, that goes well beyond the sloppy, and straight into the aggressively ignorant.
News outlets were once revered as a medium that enjoyed immense credibility, which was earned and fortified over decades. They held sway over public opinion and could swing the sentiments of their readers. But, the shift in public perception is evident.
The media itself is mostly to blame for the current state of affairs. The media establishment, especially during the Trump period, has a history of publishing articles that had to be retracted entirely later. It has a reputation for inaccuracy, if not outright deception, in its reporting.
-Raghavan Mayur 
If you can believe it, the Washington Post’s dud of a "bombshell” isn’t even the most scandalous thing about this episode in media malfeasance. No, the most scandalous thing is: Several newsrooms claimed they independently “confirmed” the Washington Post’s since-corrected "scoop.”
NBC News reported it “confirmed The Post’s characterization of the Dec. 23 call through a source familiar with the conversation.”
USA Today claimed a “Georgia official speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters confirmed the details of the call.”
ABC News reported: "President Donald Trump phoned a chief investigator in Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's office asking the official to 'find the fraud' and telling this person they would be a 'national hero' for it, an individual familiar with the matter confirmed to ABC News."
PBS NewsHour and CNN likewise seemingly claimed they independently “confirmed” the story through their own anonymous sources.
But Trump never said those things. The sources either were terribly mistaken or lying.
-Becket Adams
BuzzFeed News’ latest disputed report about former Trump attorney Michael Cohen is just the latest in a long line of Russia “bombshells” that turned out to be anything but.
The Special Counsel’s office disputed a Thursday night report by BuzzFeed claiming that President Donald Trump directed his lawyer to lie about a potential business deal in Moscow during the 2016 presidential campaign...
“BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the Special Counsel’s Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen’s Congressional testimony are not accurate,” spokesman Peter Carr said in a statement to The Daily Caller News Foundation.
-Amber Athey
Liberal, Crime, Violence, Oops, Media, Murder, Bigotry
Jeremy Joseph Christian, the 35-year-old Portland man who allegedly murdered two men and left another critically wounded while yelling anti-Muslim slurs in a knife attack on Friday, has been painted by the mainstream media as a “right-wing extremist,” but posts on his Facebook page indicate he was a supporter of socialist Senator Bernie Sanders and Green Party candidate Jill Stein.
According to screen captures of his Facebook page obtained by Buzzfeed, Christian was not a Trump supporter, as many media outlets claimed, but was a supporter of the idea of a Sanders/Stein ticket.
Democrat, Kkk, Hypocrisy, Liberal, Hate, Racism, Oops, Press, Lie, Media
CNN -- the network that promotes the hashtag #FactsFirst -- mislabeled embattled Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam as a Republican on Friday during a segment about the Democrat's apology for his racist 1984 medical school yearbook photo.
The photo showed two men holding beers -- one dressed in blackface, the other in a KKK robe -- but Northam never made clear which one was him.
The CNN chyron that mistakenly called Northam a Republican aired Friday during "Anderson Cooper 360," the nightly show hosted by Anderson Cooper. The segment focused on a video in which Northam apologized for the nearly 35-year-old photograph.
Liberal, Oops, Press, Smears, Lie, Jobs, Trump
A Massachusetts reporter who tweeted that the Annapolis, Maryland Capitol Gazette killer was wearing a Donald Trump campaign MAGA hat has announced that he has lost his job.
On Thursday, Conor Berry, who was at the time a reporter for The Republican in Springfield, Mass., tweeted out the claim that the man who is accused of killing five newspaper employees in Annapolis, Maryland, was wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat as he committed his shocking crime.
CNN.com published, deleted, and then retracted and apologized for an article that claimed Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci was the subject of a Senate investigation for his ties to Russian bankers.
An entire array of CNN journalists and analysts either has resigned, been fired, retired, forced to offer retractions, or been disgraced either for peddling ad hominem crude attacks on Trump, displaying unprofessional behavior, concocting or repeating false stories, engaging in obscene commentary, or being refuted...
- Victor Davis Hanson
CNN soon proved that it is no longer a news organization at all—as reporters like Gloria Borger, Chris Cuomo, Eric Lichtblau, Manu Raju, Brian Rokus, Jake Tapper, Jeff Zeleny, and teams such as Jim Sciutto, Carl Bernstein, and Marshall Cohen as well as Thomas Frank, and Lex Harris all trafficked in false rumors and unproven gossip detrimental to Trump, while hosts and guest hosts such as Reza Aslan, the late Anthony Bourdain, and Anderson Cooper stooped to obscenity and grossness to attack Trump.
-Victor Davis Hanson
On the Monday edition of his FOX News show, Tucker Carlson addressed a false story published by CNN that linked Trump advisor Anthony Scaramucci to a Russia-controlled investment fund that is being investigated by the Senate.
CNN ultimately retracted the story and three employees resigned.
-Ian Schwartz
Editorial, Liberal, Press, Smears, Lie, Corruption, Trump
CNN has gently walked back a report from earlier this year that faulted Attorney General Jeff Sessions for failing to reveal meetings he had with Russian officials when he applied for his security clearance – a disclosure he wasn’t required to make.
CNN reported last May that Sessions didn’t disclose meetings he had with a Russian ambassador when he was a senator. The mainstream media was all over the story and significant airtime was spent portraying Sessions as shady and dishonest. In addition to embarrassing Sessions, the storyline also fed the narrative that the Trump administration colluded with Russia during the election.
The splashy headline on CNN’s website said, “First on CNN: AG Sessions did not disclose Russia meetings in security clearance form, DOJ says.” CNN’s story claimed the incident was “the latest example of Sessions failing to disclose contacts he had with Russian officials.” Roughly six months later, the network has admitted that the entire report was essentially meaningless.
CNN Wrong On Critical Detail
CNN's original story had Donald Trump Jr receiving a heads-ups e-mail regarding Wikileaks material 10 days before it was released to the public.
Actually, he received this e-mail after Wikileaks released the material.
Liberal, Oops, Press, Trump
Three CNN editorial staffers have resigned in the wake of last week’s retracted story that suggested a questionable link between an ally of President Trump and a Russian investment fund.
Thomas Frank, Eric Lichtblau and Lex Haris resigned in the wake of the story posted on CNN’s website that had to be retracted on Friday. CNN also issued an apology to the subject of the story, Wall Street financier Anthony Scaramucci.
CNN: Out Of Context Smear of Trump...
During President Trump’s visit to Japan last month, CNN spread two false narratives about the president. The first false narrative was that Trump committed a faux pas while feeding Japanese koi fish by impatiently pouring out his entire box of fish food.
CNN zoomed in close on Trump while he and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe were feeding the fish, appearing to show the president making the embarrassing mistake. The video went viral and Trump was mocked on social media.
The full video, however, showed that Trump followed Abe’s lead and only dumped out his box of fish food after his host had done the same.
CNN: Wrong on James Comey Testimony...
CNN ran a story on June 6 that claimed former FBI Director James Comey would use his testimony the next day to refute President Donald Trump’s claim that Comey had assured him three separate times that he was not under FBI investigation.
That story was debunked the same day when Comey’s prepared remarks were released to the public, showing that Comey would actually confirm, rather than refute, Trump’s assertion.
Liberal, Incompetence, Oops, Press, Trump
CNN has corrected a Tuesday report after the release of former FBI Director James Comey's opening statement for his Thursday testimony in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee contradicted the reports' sources.
The CNN report said Comey was expected to dispute President Trump's claims that Comey said he was not under investigation on multiple occasions.
The report, titled “Comey expected to refute Trump," was based on unnamed sources and said Comey's conversations with the president "were much more nuanced," and that Trump drew the wrong conclusion.
A top CNN executive, Terence Burke, had startling news: three of their colleagues, including the team’s executive editor, were leaving the network in the wake of a retracted article about Russia and a close ally of President Trump...
within months of its introduction, the unit, CNN Investigates, had been rocked by damaging reporting errors — including another flawed story about Mr. Trump and Russia earlier in June... -Sydnet Ember and Michael M. Grynbaum
Liberal, Incompetence, Oops, Press, Bias, Trump
On Thursday evening, CNN investigative reporter Thomas Frank published a potentially explosive report involving an investigation of a Russian investment fund with potential ties to several associates of President Donald Trump.
But by Friday night, the story was removed from CNN’s website and all links were scrubbed from the network’s social media accounts...
In addition to retracting its story, CNN also apologized to Anthony Scaramucci, an adviser to Trump during the presidential campaign and a member of his transition team’s executive committee...
Liberal, Election, Incompetence, Oops, Press, Lie, Trump
On the day of Trump’s inauguration, CNN claimed Nancy Sinatra was “not happy” with the fact that the president and first lady’s inaugural dance would be to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.” The problem? Nancy Sinatra had never said any such thing. CNN later updated the article without explaining the mistake they had made.
CNN: "Incorrect"...
"CNN’s initial reporting of the date on an email sent to members of the Trump campaign about WikiLeaks documents, which was confirmed by two sources to CNN, was incorrect."
CNN Doesn't Know Ala-Freakin' Bama
Hi @CNN, I know you guys are busy analyzing lines on a map, but perhaps you use your time to study up on U.S. geography? pic.twitter.com/kVgifHfPK4
— Stephanie Grisham (@PressSec) September 5, 2019
"We were creating a story there that we didn’t know anything about"...
"The president’s hand was shaking or whatever, I think. We brought in so many medical people to tell a story that was all speculation — that he was neurologically damaged, and he was losing it. He’s unfit to — you know, whatever.
We were creating a story there that we didn’t know anything about. That’s what — I think that’s propaganda."
"And so I think the President is probably right to say, like, look you are witch hunting me. You have no smoking gun, you have no real proof."
CNN: Retracted and Apologized...
CNN.com published, deleted, and then retracted and apologized for an article that claimed Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci was the subject of a Senate investigation for his ties to Russian bankers.
After an intense public backlash, three key members of CNN’s investigative team resigned over their role in the retracted story.
Liberal, Incompetence, Oops, Press, Lie, Trump
CNN White House correspondent April Ryan embarrassed herself on Twitter today, falsely tweeting that President Trump was "heckled and booed" during a White House event...
In a now-deleted tweet, Ryan said:
Breaking: Reporters on the South Lawn have confirmed the @realDonaldTrump was heckled and booed when he came out to celebrate America.
— AprilDRyan (@AprilDRyan) June 5, 2018
What the videotape makes absolutely clear is that, yes, Trump was indeed heckled by some lefty nutjob at the event, but the patriotic crowd had booed the heckler.
Democrat, Liberal, Character, Oops, Press, Lie
CNN relied on anonymous sourcing to falsely conclude the date President Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr. received an email to access WikiLeaks documents. The outlet claimed the email was leaked and decrypted information that was not yet released to the public.
Senior congressional correspondent Manu Raju and politics reporter Jeremy Herb dated the email Sept. 4, 2016, which would have been more than a week before WikiLeaks released the documents to the public. In reality, the Trumps obtained the email on Sept. 14, a day after the documents were made public. Raju and Herb relied on two separate anonymous sources.
We know from a variety of disinterested watchdog institutions and foundations that the media has offered 90 percent negative coverage of the Trump Administration.
CNN in its anti-Trump zeal has ruined its brand by serial fabrications and firings of its marquee biased reporters.
-Victor Davis Hanson
All week, CNN anchors cited an anonymous source who claimed President Donald Trump would not confront Russian President Vladimir Putin about election meddling in their meeting at the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany.
That source turned out to be dead wrong.
-Michael Bastasch
The New York Times issued a correction Thursday on an article that incorrectly claimed all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies agreed that "Russia orchestrated the attacks, and did it to help get [Trump] elected."
A former executive editor of the New York Times says the paper’s news pages, the home of its straight-news coverage, have become “unmistakably anti-Trump.”
Jill Abramson, the veteran journalist who led the newspaper from 2011 to 2014, says the Times has a financial incentive to bash the president and that the imbalance is helping to erode its credibility.
-Howard Kurtz
On June 25, 2017, The New York Times published a report that had been debunked nearly a month prior by The Daily Caller.
In the article, the Times reasserted the false claim that 17 U.S. Intelligence agencies all concurred that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election.
-Gabe Kaminsky
Since President Trump was elected, the media landscape has divided and hardened more than ever.
Even the once-unimpeachable New York Times has been guilty of "fake news," while on Tuesday CNN had to retract an article that slimed a Trump aide based on flimsy reporting.
Liberal, Incompetence, Oops, Press
The New York Times issued a correction Thursday on an article that incorrectly claimed all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies agreed that “Russia orchestrated the attacks, and did it to help get [Trump] elected.”...
The NYT’s correction notes that: “The assessment was made by four intelligence agencies — the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community.”...
Former FBI Director James Comey refuted this false claim in a congressional hearing in May, stating that the assessment was only from the NSA, FBI and the CIA.
"In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion. If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth."
Jan. 2021: New York Times Spreads Misinformation...
On Jan. 8, The New York Times reported that Officer Sicknick had died after being struck in the head with a fire extinguisher by violent Trump supporters.
This story was quickly repeated by numerous other media outlets. Millions believed it.
The story was false.
Liberal, Incompetence, Oops, Press
The New York Times came out with a report this past week titled: “How Trump’s Rush to Enact an Immigration Ban Unleashed Global Chaos.”
It stated: “Gen. John F. Kelly, the secretary of homeland security, had dialed in from a Coast Guard plane as he headed back to Washington from Miami. Along with other top officials, he needed guidance from the White House, which had not asked his department for a legal review of the order. Halfway into the briefing, someone on the call looked up at a television in his office. ‘The president is signing the executive order that we’re discussing,’ the official said, stunned.”
Secretary Kelly, however, later strongly denied this report during a press conference Tuesday. “We knew it was coming. It wasn’t a surprise,” Kelly said.
Liberal, Incompetence, Funny, Science, Narrative, Oops, Press, Trump
Scientists appear to have debunked The New York Times' claim it was leaked a secret, gloomy climate change report which it published amid fears President Trump would suppress it...
The story, titled “Scientists fear Trump will dismiss blunt climate report,” said the draft report “has not yet been made public” but “a copy of it was obtained by The New York Times.” The paper also said “those who challenge scientific data on human-caused climate change" are worried the report will be publicly released.
But those who worked on the report are pushing back against the claims, saying the version that was obtained and posted in full by the New York Times has actually been online and available to the public for months.
Liberal, Brilliance, Oops, Press, Media, Religion, Ignorance
New York Times White House Correspondent Annie Karni came in for criticism on Tuesday after tweeting that Jewish people didn’t believe in heaven as part of a critique of President Trump’s State of the Union address.
“Trump just ad-libbed ‘they came down from heaven’ when quoting a Holocaust survivor watching American soldiers liberate Dachau. Jews don’t believe in heaven,” Karni said...
“The very first line of Genesis is when God began creating the heavens and the earth. It’s the very first line,” Philip Weintraub, a rabbi in St. Petersburg, Florida, told TheWrap... “There are a wide variety of views on the afterlife, but the concept of an afterlife is throughout Jewish history,” he said.
New York Times: Almost Entirely Wrong
Comey said a February NY Times story claiming contacts between Trump associates and Russia was "almost entirely wrong".
Incompetence, Oops, Press, Politics, Lie, Trump
WASHINGTON — Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials.
American law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the communications around the same time they were discovering evidence that Russia was trying to disrupt the presidential election by hacking into the Democratic National Committee, three of the officials said.
The Smear of Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh
New York Times' botched Kavanaugh story the latest in series of blunders from Opinion section...
"Prior to publication of this column, The Post sought comment from the Department of Homeland Security but not from the White House. We should have done both."
The correction by The Washington Post concerning false information about a phone call between former President Donald Trump and the Georgia secretary of state’s chief investigator is no anomaly.
The neglect of truth and preference for anonymous sources is deeply ingrained in the corrupt left-wing media’s strategy.
-Gabe Kaminsky
In December 2016, the Post reported that Russians had penetrated the U.S. electricity grid through a laptop at a Vermont utility. The Post framed this story within a broader infiltration narrative about Russia by invoking the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta email breaches.
However, within hours the entire story had fallen apart -- the infected laptop had never been connected to the utility's grid. The Post chose to "stealth-edit" and expand the story; only after receiving great criticism did the paper retract the story and publish an editor's note explaining the error.
-Patrick Poole
The Post continued its stellar court coverage on Wednesday, reporting on its homepage the Trump administration "violated federal law," when a judge from—you guessed it—the D.C. circuit, issued an order blocking drilling in Wyoming, claiming the Department of Interior did not "take into account climate impact."
One problem: the lawsuit was filed in August 2016, against then-Interior Secretary Sally Jewell.
- Elizabeth Harrington
Dave Weigel at Washington Post
Faked Crowd Size At Trump Event
.@DaveWeigel @WashingtonPost put out a phony photo of an empty arena hours before I arrived @ the venue, w/ thousands of people outside, on their way in. Real photos now shown as I spoke. Packed house, many people unable to get in. Demand apology & retraction from FAKE NEWS WaPo! pic.twitter.com/XAblFGh1ob
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2017
Dana Milbank Misquotes Trump
February, 2020
The embedded video above has its own cuts, so I found uncut video... Trump is clearly not calling the virus a hoax. What he's calling a hoax is the political talking point that Trump has been failing to protect the country from the virus!
-Ann Althouse
The Washington Post during the Trump Era
The most troubling trend is that these errors seem to always benefit one partisan side, raising serious concerns about political bias.
If you claim to be the guardians of democracy, fair treatment is expected.
The Washington Post
Completely Wrong on Steele Dossier
Shane "I cover intelligence and national security for the @washingtonpost" Harris
December 2019:
We determined that the Crossfire Hurricane team’s receipt of Steele’s election reporting on September 19, 2016 played a central and essential role in the FBI’s and Department’s decision to seek the FISA order.
-Inspector General Michael Horowitz
Liberal, Fraud, Oops, Press, Lie, Hoax
Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel issued an apology to President Trump on Saturday for tweeting a photo of an empty arena before a Trump rally in Florida that had been taken hours before the event started. Weigel responded minutes after a tweet from Trump, who said he had "put out a phony photo of an empty arena hours before I arrived."
Oops: The Washington Post Misquoted Trump’s Comments...
Correction: Two months after publication of this story, the Georgia secretary of state released an audio recording of President Donald Trump’s December phone call with the state’s top elections investigator.
The recording revealed that The Post misquoted Trump’s comments on the call, based on information provided by a source.
The Russians Didn't Hack The U.S. Electric Grid After All...
"An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid. Authorities say there is no indication of that so far. The computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked was not attached to the grid."
The Washington Post: Finally Debunking Themselves...
"Earlier versions of this story and its headline inaccurately characterized comments by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) regarding the origins of the coronavirus. The term 'debunked' and The Post’s use of ‘conspiracy theory’ have been removed because, then as now, there was no determination about the origins of the virus.
Washington Post's Josh Rogin: Oops...
"Prior to publication of this column, The Post sought comment from the Department of Homeland Security but not from the White House. We should have done both.
After publication, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told The Post that Stephen Bannon did not travel to see Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly on the evening of Jan. 28."
Liberal, Election, Incompetence, Oops, Press, Lie, Trump
On January 26, the Washington Post’s Josh Rogin published what seemed to be a bombshell report declaring that “the State Department’s entire senior management team just resigned.”
This resignation, according to Rogin, was “part of an ongoing mass exodus of senior Foreign Service officers who don’t want to stick around for the Trump era.” These resignations happened “suddenly” and “unexpectedly.” He styled it as a shocking shake-up of administrative protocol in the State Department, a kind of ad-hoc protest of the Trump administration...
As Vox pointed out, the headline of the piece was highly misleading: “the word ‘management’ strongly implied that all of America’s top diplomats were resigning, which was not the case.”...
According to CNN, the officials were actually asked to leave by the Trump administration rather than stay on for the customary transitional few months. The entire premise of Rogin’s article was essentially nonexistent.
A WAPO Hit Piece Gone Terribly Wrong...
Rogin had no idea what he was talking about. He got it as wrong as you can get it. Brace yourselves for something truly astonishing… A Washington Post reporter, one with all the resources of the Washington Post at his disposal … got the name of the organization wrong.
Rogin's big gotcha was based on a now-defunct group called ACCESS.
But ACCESS wasn't the name of the group Gabbard claimed paid for her trip.
The name of the actual group is AACCESS.
And the corrections and apologies were never publicized with anywhere near the breathless hype as the original incorrect story.
Despite claims of being "real news" subject to "layers and layers of fact checkers," the Post appeared to have been forced to correct and retract their stories when they got it wrong.
-Patrick Poole
"Recent reports that the president called for an increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal are absolutely false. This kind of erroneous reporting is irresponsible." -Defense Secretary Jim Mattis
Liberal, Incompetence, Oops, Press
NBC reported Thursday that the Trump administration was easing sanctions on the FSB, one of Russia’s primary intelligence agencies. Peter Alexander, NBC’s national correspondent, tweeted, “US Treasury Dept easing Obama admin sanctions to allow companies to do transactions with Russia’s FSB, successor org to KGB.”
Less than an hour later, he wrote, “Source familiar w sanctions says it’s a technical fix, planned under Obama, to avoid unintended consequences of cybersanctions.”
Liberal, Incompetence, Oops, Press, War, Lie, Trump
U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday denied a report from NBC News that he told his national security advisers in July he wanted to increase the country’s nuclear arsenal by nearly tenfold, saying he argued for its modernization...
“Recent reports that the president called for an increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal are absolutely false. This kind of erroneous reporting is irresponsible,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said.
Liberal, Incompetence, Character, Oops, Press, Smears, Trump
MSNBC host Joy Reid spectacularly failed when she tried to take a swing at President Donald Trump on Friday. Reid, who hosts a weekend show on MSNBC, attempted to cast aspersions on Trump by pointing out that two of his three wives are from nations formerly part of the Soviet Union.
“Donald Trump married one American (his second wife) and two women from what used to be Soviet Yugoslavia: Ivana-Slovakia, Melania-Slovenia,” Reid wrote.
But Trump’s first wife, Ivana, is not from Slovakia. Nor was Slovakia part of Yugoslavia. And Yugoslavia, while communist, was not a member of the Soviet bloc.
MSNBC: Populisim For The 1%
Guys. Spell check. pic.twitter.com/c2OLwXXsrp
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) September 6, 2017
ABC News reported that former national security advisor Michael Flynn was prepared to testify that President Trump, while still a candidate, directed him to contact Russian officials. But later in the day, the network issued a "clarification" that the direction came when Trump was president-elect.
Liberal, Incompetence, Oops, Press, Trump
ABC News reported that former national security advisor Michael Flynn was prepared to testify that President Trump, while still a candidate, directed him to contact Russian officials.
But later in the day, the network issued a "clarification" that the direction came when Trump was president-elect. That changed the impact of the story entirely as it's a common occurrence for presidential transition teams to reach out to foreign governments.
Dec 2017: ABC Blows Story On General Flynn...
"It is vital we get the story right and retain the trust we have built with our audience -- these are our core principles.
We fell far short of that yesterday."
Liberal, Incompetence, Oops, Press, Politics, Trump
ABC News announced Saturday that it has suspended investigative reporter Brian Ross for four weeks without pay after Ross was forced to correct a bombshell on-air report about Michael Flynn.
"We deeply regret and apologize for the serious error we made yesterday. The reporting conveyed by Brian Ross during the special report had not been fully vetted through our editorial standards process," ABC said in a statement. "As a result of our continued reporting over the next several hours ultimately we determined the information was wrong and we corrected the mistake on air and online."
False ABC News Report Hits Stock Market Hard...
Brian Ross reported that a confidante of Mike Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor that has pled guilty to lying to the FBI, said that Flynn was going to testify against the president and his family.
Later, the report was “corrected” in such a manner as to undo most of the story.
Immediately after the bombshell false report, the stock market tanked by more than 400 points.
Liberal, Incompetence, Oops, Press, Trump
The news network issued an apology after airing a banner which falsely stated that former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort pleaded guilty to five counts of manslaughter. "We apologize to our viewers and to Mr. Manafort. There simply is no excuse for this sort of mistake," ABC wrote in a statement.
Not Looking Like Mistakes...
But what one should expect with journalistic “mistakes” is that they sometimes go in one direction, and other times go in the other direction. That’s exactly what has not happened here.
Virtually every false story published goes only in one direction: to be as inflammatory and damaging as possible on the Trump/Russia story and about Russia particularly.
At some point, once “mistakes” all start going in the same direction, toward advancing the same agenda, they cease looking like mistakes.
CBS Evening News Displays Image Of Iran
Instead Of Syria
‘CBS Evening News’ Displays Image Of Iran Instead Of Syria https://t.co/MI1a6RrZIT pic.twitter.com/XsIKElGkSS
— The Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) April 12, 2018
Liberal, Incompetence, Oops, Press
Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain denied Monday that he said U.S. leadership under President Donald Trump is worse than when Barack Obama was in office... The Guardian published an interview with McCain Sunday that quoted him as saying American leadership under Obama was better than it is now under Trump.
The Left And The Kids Of Covington Catholic
In the nearly two hours of video footage that greatly elucidate what happened between a group of boys from Covington Catholic High School and Native American veteran Nathan Phillips, there are many moments that turn the media's initial, false narrative - racist teens harass well-meaning elderly man - on its head.
Friday was one of the most embarrassing days for the U.S. media in quite a long time.
The humiliation orgy was kicked off by CNN, with MSNBC and CBS close behind, with countless pundits, commentators and operatives joining the party throughout the day.
By the end of the day, it was clear that several of the nation’s largest and most influential news outlets had spread an explosive but completely false news story to millions of people, while refusing to provide any explanation of how it happened.
-Glenn Greenwald
Liberal, Financial, Oops, Press, Trump
German bank Deutsche Bank is pushing back on a report that it flagged an account tied to President Trump’s son-in-law and aide Jared Kushner for “suspicious transactions.”
The bank said in a statement that the report was wrong and that it would take legal action against the reporting, according to Reuters.
“That’s not journalism, that’s horseshit. Responsibility for fake news begins with us. We bear some responsibility for that, and we’re not taking ownership of that and addressing it. We just want to blame it all on somebody else.”
Liberal, Election, Incompetence, Oops, Press, Lie, Trump
After Trump’s electoral victory on November 8, rumors began circulating that multiple transgender teenagers had killed themselves in response to the election results. There was no basis to these rumors. Nobody was able to confirm them at the time, and nobody has been able to confirm in the three months since Trump was elected.
Nevertheless, the claim spread far and wide: Guardian writer and editor-at-large of Out Zach Stafford tweeted the rumor, which was retweeted more than 13,000 times before he deleted it.
Buzzfeed News: Wrong ...
In a vague, poorly-sourced story, Buzzfeed News claimed in January 2019 that Trump attorney Michael Cohen informed investigators employed under special counsel Robert Mueller that Trump “directed” him to lie in regard to contact he made with a Russian official.
Shortly after the publishing of the report, Mueller’s office released a statement fully denying it.
Liberal, Incompetence, Oops, Press, Lie, Trump
Reports alleging diplomats have been told to avoid eye contact with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sure sound spooky, but it's apparently a bunch of nonsense. The Associated Press's Matt Lee, who has covered the State Department for nearly two decades, personally vouched this week that the Tillerson story is bunk...
His remarks came after the Washington Post published a story this week claiming diplomats have reportedly been instructed to treat Tillerson like Medusa.
"Most of his interactions are with an insular circle of political aides who are new to the State Department. Many career diplomats say they still have not met him, and some have been instructed not to speak to him directly — or even make eye contact," the article read.
That supposed tidbit of information was soon repeated in competing newsrooms, including the Hill, New York magazine and the New York Daily News.
USA Today: The Chainsaw Bayonet
USA Today is really concerned that AR-15 owners may start putting chainsaw bayonets on the end of their military-grade, chrome-plated, super-duper terrifying "assault" rifles.
So concerned, in fact, that they posted this info video on Twitter explaining the rifle used by the Texas shooter, and all the possible after-market accessories you can buy for it – including, apparently, chainsaw bayonets. -Brittany M. Hughes
Once the media crossed the Rubicon of partisanship, there was no turning back.
The unchecked ebullience that they had showed for Obama has now been replaced by an undisguised hatred for Donald Trump.
Errors, Omissions, Mistakes, and Outright Lies Always Slant One Way...
"You will notice that establishment media errors, omissions, mistakes, and outright lies always slant one way - against me and against Republicans. Meanwhile, stories that hurt Democrats or undermine their narratives are buried, ignored, or delayed until they can do the least harm."
Liberal, Election, Incompetence, Oops, Press, Lie, Trump
At Politico on December 1, Lorraine Woellert published a shocking essay claiming that Trump’s pick for secretary of the Treasury, Steve Mnuchin, had overseen a company that “foreclosed on a 90-year-old woman after a 27-cent payment error.”...
The central scandalous claims of Woellert’s article were simply untrue. As the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Ted Frank pointed out, the woman in question was never foreclosed on, and never lost her home. Moreover, “It wasn’t Mnuchin’s bank that brought the suit.”
Politico eventually corrected these serious and glaring errors. But the damage was done: the story had been repeated by numerous media outlets including Huffington Post (shared 25,000 times on Facebook), the New York Post, Vanity Fair, and many others.
Incredibly Consequential False Stories...
How can journalists and news outlets so flamboyantly act offended when they’re attacked as being “Fake News” when this is the conduct behind which they hide when they get caught disseminating incredibly consequential false stories?
Rough Hump Day for the once-proud Peacock Network's news division, which ended up having two of its "journalists" issue public retractions after being so eager to make President Trump look bad that neither bothered to do any basic fact-checking.
-Stephen Kruiser
Liberal, Election, Incompetence, Oops, Press, Lie, Trump
On January 20, Time reporter Zeke Miller wrote that a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. had been removed from the White House. This caused a flurry of controversy on social media until Miller issued a correction. As Time put it, Miller had apparently not even asked anyone in the White House if the bust had been removed. He simply assumed it had been because “he had looked for it and had not seen it.”
Liberal, Election, Incompetence, Oops, Press, Lie, Trump
On November 22, Gabriel Sherman posted a bombshell report at New York Magazine claiming that “a group of prominent computer scientists and election lawyers” were demanding a recount in three separate states because of “persuasive evidence that [the election] results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania may have been manipulated or hacked.”...
At FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver explained that it was “demographics, not hacking” that explained the curious voting numbers. “Anyone making allegations of a possible massive electoral hack should provide proof,” he wrote, “and we can’t find any.” Additionally, Silver pointed out that the New York Magazine article had misrepresented the argument of one of the computer scientists in question.
"Virgin Galactic space plane travels twice the speed of light, commercial flights next?"
Liberal, Incompetence, Oops, Press
The Atlantic’s Washington editor-at-large Steve Clemons tweeted Friday that Secret Service management level personnel were forced to resign Thursday night and escorted out of the Eisenhower executive office building. He subsequently tweeted that one of these “fired” Secret Service agents “speculates” that Trump is “restructuring the service.”
A Secret Service spokeswoman told The Daily Caller that Clemons’ reporting is “completely false.”
Liberal, Election, Incompetence, Oops, Press, Lie, Trump
On January 31, a Fox affiliate station out of Detroit reported that “A local business owner who flew to Iraq to bring his mother back home to the US for medical treatment said she was blocked from returning home under President Trump’s ban on immigration and travel from seven predominately Muslim nations. He said that while she was waiting for approval to fly home, she died from an illness.”...
There was just one problem: it was a lie. The man had lied about when his mother died. The Fox affiliate hadn’t bothered to do the necessary research to confirm or disprove the man’s account.
The Liberal Press, February 2017...
The Associated Press Gets It
Spectacularly Wrong
The Department of Homeland Security is roundly condemning an Associated Press story that broke Friday morning about considering the use of the National Guard to “round up” undocumented immigrants.
The AP also reported that Kelly wrote the memo, but Christensen told The Daily Beast that that is “absolutely incorrect.” Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, denied the AP’s report on Twitter shortly after it published. “Not true. 100% false,” he tweeted.
AP: Trump Is Considering An Invasion of Mexico...
"You have a bunch of bad hombres down there. You aren’t doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared. Our military isn’t, so I just might send them down to take care of it."
The Press: An Undeniable Liberal Agenda
Now that Trump is in the White House, much of the media feels uninhibited in their campaign to destroy him, seeing the unprecedented nature of his presidency as license to get away with anything. -James Kirchick
Liberal, Press, Lie, Media, Religion
Pope Francis released a message condemning "fake news," saying that it's a "sign of intolerant and hypersensitive attitudes, and leads only to the spread of arrogance and hatred." ...
The tragic history of human sin, the Pope says in his message, is the first "fake news" and it dates back to the book of Genesis, when the "crafty serpent" lied to the woman. In present day, according to the Pope's message the fast digital world helps fuel the spread of "fake news" -- which he defines as "the spreading of disinformation on line or in the traditional media."
Falsely accusing a top aide of being in cahoots with a Russian bank, reporting a non-existent meeting between the EPA administrator and Dow Chemical, and saying that all the national intelligence agencies are investigating the president are not a few "errors" as the Hill called them.
They are libels.
-Don Surber
Nearly half of voters, 46 percent, believe the news media fabricate news stories about President Donald Trump and his administration, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll.
Just 37 percent of voters think the media do not fabricate stories, the poll shows, while the remaining 17 percent are undecided.
-Steven Shepard
Some of the “facts” Relotius reported, like his claim that the city voted 70.4 percent for President Donald Trump when the actual figure was 62.6 percent, could have been exposed as false with a few minutes’ research.
The same goes for other, too-good-to-be-true details, like the sign warning “Mexicans Keep Out” and a throwaway line about a resident who had “never seen the ocean.”
-James Kirchick