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Right Wing Terrorist Who Wanted to "Self-Investigate Pizzagate" Arrested in Washington DC

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Belafon12/04/2016 8:15:14 pm PST

It will be interesting, but I think Trump is starting to wake something in the media:

Brian Stelter:

Let’s tell some truths about lying, because the way Donald Trump lies has people rethinking some of the basic premises of journalism, like the assumption that everything a president says is automatically news. When President-elect Trump lies so casually, so cynically, the news isn’t so much the false thing he said, it’s that he felt like he could just go ahead and say it, go ahead and lie to you. That’s the story. […]

Court cases involving Trump have shown that he lies even when the truth is really easy to discern. And that’s what we’re seeing all again now. That’s why I think fact-checking is important, but the framing of these stories is even more important.

Take Trump’s promotion of this voter fraud conspiracy idea. He said on Twitter “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” The journalistic impulse was to say something like “Trump claims he won the popular vote.” I would suggest to you that better framing is “Trump lies again, embracing a far-right-wing conspiracy theory.”

See, focusing on the falsehood creates more confusion and gives the lie even more life. And that’s the wrong way to go. Focusing on Trump’s tendency to buy into BS gets to what’s really going on here. This calls for more reporting and for reporters to show our work, to show that we actually know the truth.

And that’s also a good starting point for us. When we see a lie, not only call it a lie, but ask why Trump feels the need to lie. I’m pretty sure you’ll take some heat for it, but it gets the discussion on the real topic.