ONE of the many lessons that Donald Trump’s election as the 45th president of the United States teaches us is that the failure of media to publish the news in proper perspective can have devastating results.
Throughout the campaign, news organizations feasted on the e-mail woes of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, but paid scant attention to Trump’s looming conflicts of interest or the fraudulent practices at his Trump University.
News media quoted the bombastic—and often false—statements that the real estate tycoon and reality TV show host made, without calling him out on the facts in the same news stories or headlines.
In a rally in November 2016, Trump claimed he watched as thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheered as the World Trade Center came tumbling down, but nobody—not the police, not the media, nor any witnesses—could verify his account. When he was finally called out on the facts, Trump simply dug his heels in and said he saw it with his own eyes—though apparently, nobody did. The upshot was more publicity for Trump, regardless of the truth.
Trump also used social media—Twitter, in particular—to peddle lies that largely went unchecked in the mainstream media.
In one Twitter post, Trump shared an image that said: “Whites killed by whites —16%. Whites killed by blacks—81%.” Politico.com, however, noted that most people are killed by someone they know, and someone of the same race. The correct numbers in 2014 for whites killed by whites was 82 percent, while the number of whites killed by blacks was 15 percent.
True to form, President Trump used his first day in office to attack the news media, falsely accusing journalists of inventing a rift between him and intelligence agencies, and deliberately understating the size of the crowd at his inauguration.
In a speech at the Central Intelligence Agency, Trump called journalists “among the most dishonest human beings on earth,” and claimed that up to 1.5-million people had attended his inauguration, even though photographs proved otherwise.
Later, at the White House, Press Secretary Sean Spicer scolded reporters and said news organizations had deliberately misstated the size of the crowd at Mr. Trump’s inauguration in an attempt to sow divisions at a time when Mr. Trump was trying to unify the country.
In defense of her boss, Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Trump, said the White House had put forth “alternative facts” to ones reported by the news media—a claim that quickly became the butt of jokes online.
Oddly enough, the term recalls a similar one used by Palace officials who urge media not to take President Rodrigo Duterte literally when he says things like he has killed criminals before, but to exercise “creative imagination” when interpreting his remarks.
Between the “alternative facts” of the Trump administration and the “creative imagination” of the Duterte administration, what we have is failure to communicate.
To nobody’s surprise, President Duterte has expressed his admiration for the new American president, saying that Trump is as crazy as he is. We can only pray that his admiration will not extend to copying Mr. Trump’s penchant for making bogus claims and shamelessly lying to the people. If it does, it is the duty of all of us—particularly the media—to call them out on their lies.