Eric Boehlert: No longer seeking access, the press admits Trump "lies"

[babylonsister]

No longer seeking access, the press admits Trump "lies"
A defining media failure
Eric Boehlert
3 hr ago


With a quick succession of headlines last week, the New York Times quietly unveiled a new chapter in its Trump coverage — the paper was suddenly calling out his lies.

"In Turning on Liz Cheney, G.O.P. Bows to Trump’s Election Lies," a Times headline read. The next day, the Times published, "Cheney’s Replacement Repeats Trumps Lies as Party Looks Ahead." (In a nostalgic twist, the online headline for that article referred to "False Claims.&quot And the following day, a print subhead for a front-page Times article read, "Party Is Banking On Pushing Elections Lies."

The good news: Beltway journalists no longer seeking access to the Trump White House are now detailing his "lies" in news coverage:

• "The 15 Most Notable Lies of Donald Trump's Presidency" (CNN)

• "Legacy of Lies -- How Trump Weaponized Mistruths During His Presidency" (ABC News)

Yesterday, the Associated Press reported, "Allegiance to a lie has become a test of loyalty to Donald Trump and a means of self-preservation for Republicans."

The bad news: The press should have been doing this for the last four years. Instead, they played purposeful semantics games. Burning through the thesaurus, journalists opted for watered-down phrases such as "falsehoods," "false claims," "inaccurate claims," "alternative facts," "alternative reality," “unsupported claim," and "erroneous description."

It was a deliberate decision to turn away from the truth —and from accurate language — while covering the most dangerous president in American history. Afraid that calling Trump a "liar" in straight news reports would spark cries of "liberal media bias," the press capitulated. In the process, Trump used his avalanche of untruths to chip away at our democratic institutions.

more...

https://pressrun.media/p/no-longer-seeking-access-the-press

[Orrex]

1. Now that the press has detached its collective mouth from his festering anus...

we suddenly see these oh-so-brave journalists calling out lies that were obvious to everyone from the beginning.

Well done, Fourth Estate!

[BobTheSubgenius]

9. I think they should be demoted.

At best, they are Sixth Estate.

[KPN]

2. The media aided and abetted via gross negligence.

[jrthin]

3. I suspect the media will also aid in the

destruction of our democracy through false equivalency and bothside-ism journalism.

[KPN]

6. Yup. They already are and have. Not all media,

but most corporate media. I read here on DU last week that the vast majority of media owners in the US are Republican (no source was cited though), but that makes sense.

[gab13by13]

7. Cable news included.

The only true progressive news that I get is on Sirius radio, and on the internet, like here at DU.

[Botany]

4. Every time Trump said "fake news*" he was lying and the media knew it too.

* Connections between the Trump Campaign and Russia

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/u-s-has-new-intel-manafort-friend-kilimnik-gave-trump-n1264371

BTW it was not just polling data but data analytics

[gratuitous]

5. Four years, five years, six years . . . does it really matter now?

The former guy has inoculated himself and his supporters from being called a liar, because they all know the reflexive response: Fake news! But the major media had to, had to, had to, maintain that precious access to an administration full of liars. Why? None of them can tell you today why they blinked at the lies over and over again. Gosh, wasn't it terrible the way that administration just lied? Why did they do it? Because they could, and every one of them knew there would be no calling to account.

Now that the horses are all safely loose from the barn, the Times and the Post and all the other responsible, august media outlets at last are making sure the gates are securely locked. So courageous.

[gab13by13]

8. Nah, they are still right wing,

they still have the same owners.

[Harker]

10. I don't much like people making false claims to me...

but I really hate being lied to.

[apnu]

11. Journalists played semantics for one very big reason: "Access"

They would not have been issued press credentials by the White House if they were using "lies" instead of watered down language.

All of that was to appease Trump's fragile ego. And it worked, Trump complained, almost daily, about CNN, MSNBC, NYT and others, but never followed through on pulling creds.

I got the sense the non-Trump beholden media was chomping at the bit to say "lies".

[Grasswire2]

12. Credentialing authority for WH correspondents used to be the purview of the Correspondents Assoc.

It was ceded to the WH press office in recent years, and thus began the filling of the James Brady Briefing Room with stooges and shills in the Trump administration.

It was a scandal, in the GW Bush WH, when a male prostitute posed as a journalist and was admitted to the Briefing Room on day passes and even called on to ask questions. He was a freeper, and that's how he was ID'd as a stooge. A blogger put it together and WaPo picked up the story.

It is incredibly important for WH Correspondents Association to act with power independent of any administration. Jon Karl of ABC was president of the association during Trump's term, and he was too cozy with Trump. We all saw the results of that easing of rules.

[ancianita]

13. Give the press a cookie.