Donald Trump woke up Sunday morning and decided it was a good day to attack the media, which usually means he doesn’t like the coverage he’s getting.
To be fair, a lot of Trump’s negative coverage is from a series of own-goals he and his team have made in its opening salvo as the administration that is supposed to lead the United States. The Donald Trump Jr. story that’s been dominating the news cycle says a lot more about how clueless the people surrounding Trump are than it says about the media coverage.
But, being called “FAKE NEWS” by Trump certainly seems to set some folks *coughCNNcough* in a tizzy.
Calling the American news media "fake news" may feel good to some. It may energize the base. But it's bad for our democracy.
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) July 16, 2017
Call me old fashioned, but perhaps the best way to avoid being called “FAKE NEWS” is to stop filing stories that end up being wrong, retracted, misleading, or otherwise completely and totally fake, no?
It also doesn’t help that Acosta’s outlet, CNN, has openly declared war on Trump and has gone out of its way to focus on what end up being non-issues. This has led to a lot of the controversial (read: incorrect) stories on Trump. After all, how could we forget that three journalists at CNN got a story so wrong they had to RESIGN over it?
CNN isn’t the only guilty party, mind you, but Acosta and CNN really love to cry the loudest over being called “FAKE NEWS” by the president.
The president is being totally insecure, unpresidential, and immature by doing so, but CNN and the rest of the media who whine and cry over this day in and day out are being just as immature and insecure.
As someone who is not a fan of the media or the president, it’s one of those situations where maybe it’s best to root for injuries (in the metaphorical sense, lest Andrew Kaczynski come after me next). Acosta’s assertion that the president calling any media “FAKE NEWS” is bad for democracy is absolutely absurd. First of all, we’re a Constitutional Republican. Secondly, the democratic process existed long before news media as we know it came into being.
Journalists like to think of themselves as world-changers and democracy-saviors, but in reality, they are scribes who simply record history as it happens. They are not the great experts of the world they think they are, and nowhere near as many people care what a D.C. bureau reporter thinks about a story as that D.C. bureau reporter would like to think.
People read, watch, and listen to the news to find out what’s going on. They rarely actually care what you think. If you report news that is fake, don’t be mad when someone calls you “FAKE NEWS,” even if it’s the President of the United States.
Just do your damn jobs.
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