Pod Save America explains why it's so dangerous for the media to uncritically repeat Trump's lies amid pandemic
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Pod Save America explains why it's so dangerous for the media to uncritically repeat Trump's lies amid pandemic
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From the March 9, 2020, edition of Crooked Media' Pod Save America
JON FAVREAU (HOST): Last week Trump told this complete lie that the testing delay was Obama's fault and The New York Time's headline was "criticized for coronavirus response, Trump points to Obama administration." You have to get to the third paragraph and even then it just says "it was not entirely clear what he was referring to." How should the media cover a president who's just lying to the public during a global pandemic?
JOHN LOVETT (HOST): I don't think that's the right way. You know, when Donald Trump is flailing and making things up on the fly, you don't have to pretend that you just couldn't put enough researchers on the case to get what he was referring to. And, you know, one of the authors of that story Peter Baker famously talks about how hard he works not to form his own opinions. To not even discuss political matters when he's in private, to not vote. And, Peter, if your mind is so open that your brain falls out of your head and into the fucking sewer, maybe there's just some utility to being a little bit critical of what you're told given that you're the paper of record and one of the most important places people get information about an ongoing pandemic.
TOMMY VIETOR (HOST): Yeah, I mean, I just think that on a normal day, just sort of uncritically repeating Trump's lies is shitty journalism. You see it all the time, especially on social media, feeds for news outlets, 'Trump says that Obama killed an innocent person.' You know, something ridiculous and it just gets repeated. And we need to fact check it in the first instance. Because it doesn't matter if you have one story in the paper that's just the crazy attack on Obama from Trump, but then the lead all is a bigger analysis about the way he lies in this social media-driven world, the Trump campaign can take these stories that blame Obama and put a couple hundred thousand dollars behind it on Facebook and boost it to all these people. So, when Trump is spinning, like, dangerous health information, I think we have an extra health obligation to fact check that on the front end or not even report it.
FAVREAU: Right.
VIETOR: You don't have to report crazy lies. He says a lot of crap every day.