Mainstream media peddles fake news
Your Feb. 23 editorial criticizing President Trump’s contention that “the fake news media … is the enemy of the American people!” is a masterpiece of hypocrisy and self-deception.
You said it was “foolish (and) despicable.” You concluded that the “the media plays a critical role in discerning truth from fiction … making sure the American public is informed about what truly is going on in the halls of government.” Democracy demands this, but you fail the test miserably.
The word “fake” means, “having a false or misleading appearance.” Among the countless important news stories that the evidence now reliably shows are fake, which the mainstream media, including this paper, have peddled in recent years are: Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction; Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi was about to commit genocide against his own people; Syria’s Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons against his own people; Russia invaded Ukraine; Syria and Russia massacred moderate rebels in Aleppo; Russia participated in the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner over Ukraine; Russia hacked the emails of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee; and on and on.
Every one of these stories has been exposed to be fake by alternative media, not by the mainstream media like you.
Far from playing a critical role in discerning truth from fiction, the mainstream media instead misinforms us about what is truly going on in the halls of government. It’s called propaganda.
You also quote a Washington Post piece saying that Trump averages four fake statements a day. Maybe he does, I don’t know, but I’ll bet the Observer-Reporter averages at least that every day. For example, every time you print a favorable piece on the nation’s unemployment rate, job growth, GDP, stock market highs, among many other statistics, you are spreading misleading news. As a university research professor who has worked with all these types of data, I can assure you that every one of these statistics has been politically manipulated to make our country’s economic state look a lot rosier than it is.
And you know what? The people out there know that what they are being told is fake. It would be refreshing if you made that transparent.
Robert Hanham
Carmichaels