2017: The Year President Trump Put the Media on Notice
"You are fake news!"
12.29.2017
7
2017 was the year of fake news. The Barack Obama/media love-fest finally came to an end and a new White House occupant let the press know that their leftist bias would no longer be welcomed.
The media was put on notice from the first official White House press conference given by then-press secretary Sean Spicer. He informed the press pool that they would be held accountable for “irresponsible and reckless” reporting going forward. Spicer urged journalists to stop “sowing division” and instead report facts and to stop framing narratives that suited their agendas.
“There’s been a lot of talk in the media about the responsibility to hold Donald Trump accountable, and I’m here to tell you that it goes two ways,” Spicer said just days after the Inauguration. “We’re going to hold the press accountable, as well.”
“The American people deserve better," Spicer continued, "and as long as he serves as the messenger for this incredible movement, he will take his message directly to the American people, where his focus will always be.”
Of course, all of that fell on deaf ears and biased reporting continued. CNN led the pack with relentless coverage of the Russia collusion “nothingburger” and received the most ire from the new administration. President-elect Trump got the ball rolling early on when he smashed CNN’s Jim Acosta with the “fake news” label:
That label stuck hard to CNN and didn’t go away even when Spicer was replaced by a new press secretary at the podium, Mike Huckabee’s daughter Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The press had met its new match in this strong, outspoken, pull-no-punches woman. Sanders let CNN know that they were a “disgrace to all of media, to all of journalism:”
“I think that we have gone to a place where if the media can’t be trusted to report the news, then that’s a dangerous place for America. And I think if that is the place that certain outlets are going, particularly for the purpose of spiking ratings, and if that’s coming directly from the top, I think that’s even more scary, and certainly more disgraceful.”
But perhaps the biggest blow to CNN and the media of the year was when President Trump lit up Twitter with a video of an old appearance at a WWE wrestling match that had him slamming a man with a CNN logo superimposed on his face to the mat:
The snowflake media felt threatened by this innocent ribbing and claimed the president was authorizing violence against them. Everyone else was laughing too hard to worry about their hurt feelings.
The White House's message to the media was repeated later in the year when press secretary Sanders scolded them for spending an entire year spreading false narratives:
“The only thing I see misleading is a year's worth of stories that have been fueling a false narrative about this Russia collusion and a phony scandal based on anonymous sources. And I think that is, if we're going to talk about misleading, that's the only thing misleading I see in this entire process.”
In the end, CNN had a terrible year, coming in last place among all cable news networks. That’s what they get for lying.
Polls conducted throughout the year found the media covered trump overwhelmingly negative. Pew’s end-of-the-year poll found that Trump got three times the critical coverageas did President Obama. In Trump’s first 60 days in office, he only received 5 percent positive coverage. For Obama’s first 60 days, he was covered 42 percent positive. Still need convincing the media is biased?
But if the media refused to listen and learn, the American people didn’t. A majority now say they don’t trust the media to tell them the truth. Poynter, who conducted this poll, stated, “The finding should be a fire alarm for newsrooms; a widespread, fundamental misunderstanding among the public of what we do points to an urgent need to be more transparent about how and why we report news.”
While that sounds nice, it’s unlikely the fake news will stop in 2018. After all, old habits die hard. What we can expect is the Trump administration to punch back twice as hard at a media that would love nothing more than to bring down his presidency. And you can also be sure that TruthRevolt will be there every step of the way to point out the media's malpractice.
Posts
