The notion that Donald Trump was elected president of the United States because of fake news stories going viral is something the liberal media, and CNN’s Brian Stelter in particular, have been harping on for a while now. It was nagging Stelter so much that he dedicated a monologue to it during “Reliable Sources” on Sunday. “Now, to be clear, fake news infects the left and the right,” he noted at one point, “but the evidence indicates this is more of a problem on the right, among some, not all, but some Trump supporters.”
He said that researchers needed to look into why people believe the lies they see on the internet. Then he suggested that Trump was the cause, like he was a parent passing on a bad habit to a child. “But I would suggest to you that it starts at the top,” he bemoaned, “After all, Trump himself frequently misled voters during his campaign and he has been personally fooled by fictional stories.”
Stelter announced that he was buying into his own confirmation bias, and taking the opinion and the insults of a fake news publisher as fact:
Now, I have a hard time believing any creator of any fake news website but one of them, Paul Horner, spoke with The Washington Post this week and look at what he said, quote, “I think Trump is in the White House because of me. His campaign manager posted my story about a protesting getting paid $3500 as fact. I made that up.” Horner went on to say, “I thought they would fact check it and would make them look worse but Trump supporters - they just keep running with it. They never fact check anything.”
But there was no mention by Stelter about how many people actually believe such stories, or how the premise behind that particular story is based in fact. Project Veritas exposed how a liberal political organization, Democracy Partners, payed for protesters at Trump rallies. Stelter didn’t mention how Scott Foval, who openly and clearly admits to starting “anarchy,” was fired over it.
On a similar note about admitting the truth about stories, on CNN’s New Day Saturday Stelter tried to smear the Media Research Center by including images of two NewsBusters articles during his shtick about fake news. He still has yet to publicly address what he found “fake” about either of them. He didn’t have a problem with the MRC when Rich Noyes was a guest on his show to discuss the media’s hostility to Trump.
Later on, he seemed to condescendingly wag his finger at Trump supporters, saying, “The more media literal you are the less likely you will be tricked by propaganda and that's what it is, propaganda.” “Journalism is also a big part of the solution, as an industry we have to redouble our efforts to restore our credibility,” he stated.
But it’s interesting that Stelter threw around words like “propaganda” and “credibility” when he was called out a week ago for his own liberal bias. Stelter also infamously blamed the firebombing of a GOP campaign office on Trump, but he scolded an Associated Press editor for ‘misleading’ people after exposing how Hillary Clinton gave foundation donors special meetings.
Towards the end of the segment, Stelter seemed to get emotional as he asked, “So, how does this end? With no one trust anything? There's more fact checking than ever, but fewer people trust in the facts. Are we moving more into an authoritarian media climate, more like Russia or China?” But the problem is how the media distorts the facts, either through using unfair labels, omitting news damaging to Democrats, or, in some instances, flat out lying. The media is not a monolithic force for good as Stelter likes to depict it as. The media even makes up their own fake news stories from time to time.
According to the poll conducted by the MRC and YouGov, 70 percent of people view the media as neither honest nor trust worthy. Almost 80 percent say the media was pro-Clinton, and the same goes for almost a third of Clinton supporters.
The public is smarter than they are given credit for, they are given*and very perceptive. And the fear that fake news is what drove a Trump victory over Clinton is powered by a distrust with the intelligence the public. If Stelter and the media want their credibility back, then they need to show some trust in the public and not just demand that the public trust them.