Media Lies in the Trump Era: The Definitive List

• Media Lies in the Trump Era: The Definitive List
  by SHARYL ATTKISSON, https://sharylattkisson.com/
  156. June 9, 2021
  The Inspector General found that, contrary to false media reports by NPR and others, and implications by NBC and others, the Secret Service did not clear Lafayette Park in May of 2020 for the purposes of allowing Trump to have a photo op posing with a Bible. The crowd was cleared for a contractor to install a fence and because protesters were breaking the law.
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  155. June 2, 2021
  The Washington Post joins a cacophony of other media in finally correcting their reporting that falsely claimed, early and often, that the Covid-19 “lab theory” was a “debunked” “conspiracy theory.”
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  154.  April 27, 2021
  A New York Times report one year ago this week was wildly incorrect in projecting the first Covid-19 vaccine would not be ready until November of 2033. They were only off a little bit: instead of taking more than 13 years, it took about seven months. The Times also said if a SARS vaccine were able to be “repurposed” that could be ready as early as “late 2021.”
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  Also, nearly every expert quoted in the Times article was also far off the mark, including vaccine industry propagandist Peter Hotez, who discussed a fast-tracked 18-month time frame.
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  The original post and list follow. Additional items will now be added at the top of this post.
  We the media have “fact-checked” President Trump like we have fact-checked no other human being on the planet, and he’s certainly given us plenty to write about. That’s probably why it’s so easy to find lists enumerating and examining his mistakes, missteps and “lies.”
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  But as self-appointed arbiters of truth, we’ve largely excused our own unprecedented string of fact-challenged reporting. The truth is, formerly well-respected, top news organizations are making repeat, unforced errors in numbers that were unheard of just a couple of years ago.
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  Our repeat mistakes involve declaring that Trump’s claims are “lies” when they are matters of opinion, or when the truth between conflicting sources is unknowable; taking Trump’s statements and events out of context; reporting secondhand accounts against Trump without attribution as if they’re established fact; relying on untruthful, conflicted sources; and presenting reporter opinions in news stories, without labeling them as opinions.
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  What’s worse, we defend ourselves by trying to convince the public that our mistakes are actually a virtue because we (sometimes) correct them. Or we blame Trump for why we’re getting so much wrong. Is a little bit like a police officer taking someone to jail for DUI, then driving home drunk himself: he may be correct to arrest the suspect, but he should certainly know better than to commit the same violation.
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  So since nobody else has compiled an updated, extensive list of this kind, here are:
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  Notable Mistakes and Missteps in Major Media Reporting on Donald Trump
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  1. Aug. 2016-Nov. 2016:

  The New York Post published modeling photos of Trump’s wife Melania and reported they were taken in 1995. Various news outlets relied on that date to imply that Melania, an immigrant, had violated her visa status. But the media got the date wrong. Politico was among the news agencies that later issued a photo date correction.
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  2. Oct. 1, 2016:

  The New York Times and other media widely suggested or implied that Trump had not paid income taxes for 18 years. Later, tax return pages leaked to MSNBC ultimately showed that Trump actually paid a higher rate than Democrats Bernie Sanders and President Obama.
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  3. Oct. 18, 2016:

  In a Washington Post piece not labelled opinion or analysis, Stuart Rothenberg reported that Trump’s path to an electoral college victory was “nonexistent.”
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  4. Nov. 4, 2016:
  USA Today misstated Melania Trump’s “arrival date from Slovenia” amid a flurry of reporting that questioned her immigration status from the mid-1990s.
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  read more.

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