Recently newspapers around the country joined together criticizing President Trump’s “relentless ‘fake news’ attacks on our constitutionally protected free press”.[1]
The Post-Record joined their “brothers and sisters in journalism”[2] with an editorial [3] by Post-Record managing editor, Kelly Moyer and a guest column [4] by Fred Obee, the Executive Director of the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association (WNPA).
These columns actually provide examples of “fake news”.
Obee leads off with six reports from papers around the state including: "a grieving orca … carrying her dead calf", an attempt to “exempt [state] lawmakers from portions of the Public Records Act”, and how to support a Port Townsend firefighter “following his heart surgery.”[5]
Obee then asks “Is this fake news?” But Obee’s examples are not the type of news stories in which Trump criticizes as fake news.
Similarly, Moyer’s defense references stories with emotional content: a stepmother who learns her son died on 9/11, a USS Indianapolis survivor who watched shipmates be “picked off by sharks”, and Paralympic athletes.
She claims “these stories happened”. But the real question is did the story happen in the way it was reported? For example,
On August 18, an illegal alien wanted for murder in Mexico was arrested driving his wife to the hospital to deliver their baby. Media outlet headlines proclaimed:
· “ICE arrested a man driving his pregnant wife to give birth. She drove herself to the hospital” (Washington Post)[6]
· "Ice Agents, Part Of Trump Crackdown, Detain Husband Driving Pregnant Wife To Deliver Baby” (Newsweek)[8]
Neither did the actual reports mention the man was wanted for murder. That absence of these facts mislead on what actually happened? That false narrative then fuels outrage for those already protesting the Trump administration’s separating children from their families at the border and calls to abolish ICE.
To their credit, NBC News did report the man was wanted on an outstanding murder warrant in both the headline and in the report: “ICE arrests murder suspect as he takes pregnant wife to the hospital”.[9] Few followed suit.
In addition, how often does the media employ euphemisms? An “undocumented immigrant” doesn’t sound as bad as “illegal alien”. Opposition to illegal immigration is labeled as hostility to immigration implying disapproval of the legal form also. This manipulates language creating a reality that doesn’t exist. The media are professional journalists. They make their living in the use of language. And they know when they manipulate that language.
The same day the editorials appeared, the Post-Record printed a News Brief about a Resolution co-sponsored by Sen. Patty Murray condemning the White House’s attempts to restrict media access and affirming the importance of a free and unfettered press”[10] because the White House banned “CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins from a press event after she questioned President Trump on his relationship with his former attorney Michael Cohen.”
The brief ignores the fact that Collins shouted six questions AFTER the Oval Office event ended. When asked to leave she refused. She was barred from only one event, an event at which other CNN reporters were invited.
Does barring one reporter from one event “violate the spirit of the First Amendment” as claimed in the Resolution? The reader isn’t given the facts that lead to that question.
Did the media coordinate a defense against the Obama Administration for seizing the private emails of Fox News reporter James Rosen or wiretapping the Associated Press thereby treating the media as an actual “enemy of the people”? Or is coordination only warranted when a President utters that phrase?
Moyer provides another example: “When they hear scientists saying climate change is destroying us and we must make changes right now if our children are to have a future on this planet, they don’t believe it.”[11]
Except that a vigorous scientific debate does exist on the impact of climate change. Two, the climate is extremely complex with many variables. Any computer model is only as good as its underlying algorithms and the data being processed. We cannot correctly predict a 10-day forecast let alone accurately forecast 5, 10, 70 years out. Third, “climate change” is a euphemism that hides the real issue: Is man’s use of fossil fuels causing global warming?
Yet, Moyer uses emotionally-charged language:
- “climate change is destroying us”,
- need to “make changes right now” for our children “to have a future on this planet”.
- “The dangers of not believing factual information is going to bring us all down”.
Can Moyer be trusted to accurately report opposing factual information that she believes will destroy us?
Several years ago, the LA Times said they wouldn’t publish claims of climate skeptics. Clearly the LA Times doesn’t share Obee’s view that “Our free press supports the rights of people expressing every imaginable political viewpoint”?
A “constitutionally protected free press” has no constitutional protection from criticism when they abuse the power of the pen.
Misleading headlines, euphemisms, factual omissions, equivocation are routinely employed by and undermine today's media.
Misleading headlines, euphemisms, factual omissions, equivocation are routinely employed by and undermine today's media.
The national media bears the brunt of the fake news blame. But their culpability is also “settling even on small newspapers”. A free people needs a free and honest press. To truly serve “as watchdogs to protect the public interest”, the media needs to police themselves and eradicate misleading information. This will also “protect the public interest” and, as Moyer writes, “create a richer, more sustainable community.”
[1] Kelly Moyer, “Will you believe the propaganda or fight ‘fake news’ attacks?”, Camas-Washougal Post-Record, August 16, 2018. https://www.camaspostrecord.com/news/2018/aug/16/will-you-believe-the-propaganda-or-fight-fake-news-attacks/
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Fred Obee, “No excuse for fake news rhetoric”, Camas-Washougal Post-Record, August 16, 2018. https://www.camaspostrecord.com/news/2018/aug/16/no-excuse-for-fake-news-rhetoric/
[5] Ibid.
[10] “Sen. Murray condemns Trump’s escalating attacks on the media”, News Brief, Camas Post-Record, p. A5
[11] Moyer ibid.
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