January 22, 2017

Handling Trump lies

Sam Smith - If I were to tell a reporter that I had built Trump Tower or that 250,000 people had come to my birthday party, before the reporter wrote that story there would be a check of the facts. And if the story ran it would do so only as evidence that I told some lies.

The media needs to follow a similar pattern with Trump and his aides. Maybe put a time delay on news conferences (as TV already does where there might be obscenities) until the basic facts have been checked. Publishing or broadcasting Trumpish likely lies without double-checking them merely plays into his game.

Politico - White House counselor Kellyanne Conway on Sunday defended press secretary Sean Spicer's statement criticizing media coverage of the crowds at President Donald Trump's inauguration, saying he presented "alternative facts."

In an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," host Chuck Todd pressed Conway on why Spicer, who blasted the media coverage of the crowds from the White House briefing room Saturday evening, would appear "in front of the podium for the first time and utter a falsehood."

"You're saying it's a falsehood. ... Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that," Conway said.

"Look, alternative facts are not facts. They're falsehoods," Todd responded.

Without taking reporters' questions, Spicer called Trump's inaugural crowds "the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period." Photographs, however, show the crowd to be considerably smaller than former President Barack Obama's inauguration in 2009

Checking Spicer's lies

1 comment:

Greg Gerritt said...

i get the feeling that more and more of the mdia will report the lies of the Toxic Dump as lies