President Trump’s description of the mainstream media as “fake news” was right on the money.
Sometimes they flat-out lie, sometimes they refuse to report critical elements of a story, and sometimes they go straight to press with VERY dubious information without bothering to do any fact-checking.
But the result is always the same – more FAKE NEWS being shoved down the throats of Americans.
And they have the gall to accuse President Trump of being loose with the facts?!
The latest example of this sad state of affairs happened in the wake of the Florida school shooting.
Eager to identify the shooter with Trump’s supposed ultra-right-wing supporters, the Associated Press published a story saying Nikolas Cruz belonged to a local white nationalist movement known as the “Republic of Florida.”
That claim was provided to the AP by a group member named Jordan Jereb.
The problem is that the AP apparently didn’t bother doing even the most rudimentary fact-checking before running the story.
Because, just a day later, it was discovered that Jereb had lied, and more than that, had tricked this country’s top media wire service into publishing that lie.
From The Daily Caller:
The Associated Press is admitting that they were lied to by a white nationalist who claimed his group was connected to the school shooter in Parkland, Florida.
Jordan Jereb, a member of white nationalist group “Republic of Florida,” claimed on Wednesday that Nikolas Cruz, the shooter that killed 17 people at a Parkland high school, was a member of his group and participated in paramilitary drills with them. The Associated Press ran with Jereb’s claims, leading a number of outlets to publish blurbs of their report.
The AP admitted on Friday night that they were misled by Jereb.
“A white nationalist appears to have lied to The Associated Press and other news organizations when he claimed that Florida school-shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz was a member of his obscure group,” the outlet wrote in a follow-up piece. “Law enforcement officials have said they didn’t have any evidence to support the claim that Republic of Florida leader Jordan Jereb made in interviews with several news organizations.”
Way to go, AP. Great journalism, going to print despite conflicting information from the police and without doing a thorough check of the claims provided by a sketchy source.
If these clowns are the gatekeepers of the information disseminated through our media, then it’s no wonder we’re having such problems with the truth in America.
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