The real cost of fake news accusations
By Callum Borchers
April 18 at 2:57 PM
... Trump appears not to have considered the real cost of his “fake news” accusations. When there is an international dispute — as there is between the United States and Russia over who was behind the chemical attack in Syria — it is in the president's best interest for the reporting of U.S. news outlets to be regarded as legitimate on the world stage. Yet Trump claims constantly that The Washington Post, New York Times, CNN and others are not to be believed.
Trump's antagonism toward the press hurts him in other ways, too. Last week, for example, the White House issued a two-sentence, information-starved summary of a phone call between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. China, meanwhile, issued a 14-paragraph statement describing its version of the conversation.
Trump and his aides probably thought they were sticking it to the media by withholding details of the call. What they really accomplished, however, was empowering China to dictate the public narrative.
Also last week, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson mostly avoided reporters on a visit to Moscow, in keeping with his previously stated position that “all of the things we're going to do, you will know them after they’ve happened.” Because Tillerson's team refused to keep U.S. journalists up to date throughout the visit, Russia was in control ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/04/18/the-real-cost-of-trumps-fake-news-accusations/
