You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Fake News.
It’s a term that is in the media a lot these days thanks to President Trump and his combustible handling of the 24 hour news cycle.
“The leaks are real. The news is fake.”
What?
The national media comes unglued like a paper Mache aqueduct.
What is Fake News?
RACOON GETS G.E.D AND GOES TO COLLEGE ON FOOTBALL SCHOLARSHIP!
Now that’s fake news.
PRESIDENT’S ADVISOR SPOKE TO RUSSIAN OFFICIAL.
Is that fake news? or simply a theory that needs to be substantiated with facts.
Because the news cycle is endless, fueled by 24 hour news channels that charge top dollars for commercials, the news cycle spins interminably. It spins wildly, like a bellicose tornado chewing up outhouses full of poorly vetted hog dung and then spewing it randomly across the landscape.
Trump versus the National News Media.
Custer’s last stand was more civil.
Since Trump took office, the phrase “FAKE NEWS” has become part of the national lexicon.
From the President’s point of view, the media has launched a political witch hunt intent on undermining every moment of his presidency.
Previous presidents have been able to tune out the white noise. Not Trump. He channel surfs it. He watches it all. He absorbs it all. Then the President throws it right back at the media sausage factory grinding the incessant negative gruel.
Trump is not shy. He will tell abc news it is fake. He will call out the New York Times for an article he doesn’t like. And then there’s CNN. Trump can’t help himself when he watches CNN. The channel turns his orange face red with exasperation.
CNN is a non stop vomitorium of so called experts pontificating, conjecturing and issuing opinions stinkier than a baboons bung hole. What the President now calls fake news, CNN calls Trumps radical immigration policies, his questionable cabinet picks or his enigmatic business holdings around the planet.
Trump says he handles bad news better than anyone.
But in reality, bad news turns Trump’s stomach like a chemo patient shot gunning tequila shots in a Tia Juana bus station. Trump is a narcissist who loves the attention and the positive press.
When Trump turns on TV, all he sees is talking head blowhards, spewing commentary based on too few facts and way too much time to fill. It’s an onslaught of negativity piled on top of prophecies of doom.
He’s only been President for a month, but already the National Media has equated him to Hitler and his wife to a harlot with a 3rd grade education.
I can see why Trump has a problem with CNN. It’s often a swirling toilet of innuendo and self promoting flatulence. A single topic leads to hours of speculation by 7 experts all trying to outshout one another. These talking heads are squeezed in tiny televised boxes, in visual confines so cramped, it is the broadcasting equivalent of human trafficking.
I can only imagine the thin skinned President watching this verbal diarrhea and growing irritated, his heat miser hair defying gravity on a veil of angry White House vapors.
A kissing booth in a Malaria Ward has more appeal for the Donald.
All this talk of Fake News has made me think about what the hell that even means.
Recently I celebrated my 21st year at my TV station.
Most people on FACEBOOK were kind and congratulatory.
Then there was the one guy, hiding in the ether, wearing an undershirt covered in marmalade. His FACEBOOK profile made him look like a normal guy. Maybe he is. But he chose this moment to tell me to go f*** myself. “You are Fake News,” He spewed in a venomous, unprovoked assault.
Fake News?
I’m a lot of things, but Fake?
If I knock on your door, you better damn well know this s*** is gonna get serious. Fake? I’ll show you fake while I’m shoving my journalistic boot up your ass.
Fake News?
We know it when we see it, right? Is it Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live?
Is it the Onion, with its scathing headlines that make you blink twice and think at least once.
Thanks to hundreds of news outlets and millions of social media accounts, there is so much unsubstantiated news out there, it is being forced into the blathosphere like a fire hose spraying bloody chum.
It’s a perfect storm of volatility. Donald Trump has come into the White House with such an unpresidential tone, it’s startling to the conventional media. The national media was use to being pampered and catered to. There was a process and a way of doing things. Now up is down and black is white. The national press corps is aghast at the short sheeted bed they now sleep in night after night. For the last 8 years, these scribes and electronic bloviators were lap dogs for the Obama administration. They bowed before the mighty O absorbing his sweet and sassy rhetoric like a college girl fawning for a smooth saxophone player.
Then the 2016 election bus went off the cliff, exploding on the rocks, incinerating baby seals and crushing dreams.
Hey national news media. Trump simply doesn’t care what the hell you think.
Those that hated the candidate, abhor the president.
Journalists are suppose to be unbiased, but hate and loathing is a difficult emotion to mask.
I knew that the world had shifted off it’s journalistic axis election night when I saw Martha Radatz of ABC News crying on air. I thought maybe she had paprika in her eyes, or perhaps she was allergic to unexpected election returns. I think it was the realization that the new norm was going to be a political toss of the dice.
Presidents have long hated the national media. But in Jefferson’s era, you needed a stage coach to get the news across town.
Now all you need is a smart phone and smart alec comment and you can be part of the national discussion. It’s instantaneous vomit into the ether that is so superficial, so knee jerk, that trying to classify the public’s mood at any given moment is like trying to pin down the breeze after a thunderstorm.
Richard Nixon battled the National Press. Donald Rumsfeld gave as good as he got. But Trump? He is a bull in a china shop.
Jake Tapper at CNN calls him unhinged. Jesse Watters on Fox says “that’s Trump being Trump.”
Like him or hate him, the fight is on. The National Media is taking a spanking. And they are going to spank back. It’s going to be a 15 round fight where facts suffer and the American people have to sort it our for themselves.
The media and much of the American public wish Trump was more presidential. But that’s not who he is. It wasn’t who he was on the campaign trail and it isn’t who he is now.
So when a story floats into the room that is either sketchy or damaging, Trump labels it Fake News.
The plan is simple. You punch me in the face. I’ll punch you in the face. While the media is working to delegitimize his administration, Trump is working to delegitimize the national press.
“Nobody believes you anymore. Fake News,” he boasts.
It’s working. Nobody in my life, almost 30 years a journalist has ever called me Fake News.
I don’t cover the president. I won’t ever meet Vladimir Putin. Yet I am now the target of some hooligan who calls me Fake News.
F*** you Mr. Fake News.
I spent four years in Journalism School. It’s like a frat house where you are incessantly beat and branded and taught that truth is light. Follow the facts, no matter where they lead you. Check your opinions and ideology and preconceptions at the door. Enter the tabernacle of news and pray to a pure God who is unbiased and true.
Fake News my ass.
I got my masters on a cold interstate covering cars wrapped around trees. I stood behind crime tape on a rain filled afternoon while a momma wept in the distance. I’ve flown in an army chopper over a farm field of white while a pilot pointed at that blanket of snow telling me that a 1000 head of cattle are frozen to death below.
That’s the masters program for an aspiring TV journalist.
Trust me. There’s nothing fake about sitting in the living room with a mother who is clutching the picture of her son who has just been identified by the state police as the other dead child in the fiery wreck.
Fake News? F*** you!
I’ve been wrong many times. And every time I am wrong, it steals a bit of my soul. A true journalist strives to be honest and fair. A true journalist seeks the truth like a Labrador returning a thrown tennis ball.
You think every time I interview a skum bag in jail, his gang tattoos ripe on his festering skin, I believe him? When he stares me in the eye and clutches his bible and talks in reverent tones for the momma he loves, you think I believe him?
“I didn’t do it,” he says.
“OK,” I say publicly. “F*** You lying scum bag, I think privately.
And what do I air?
What he said. “I didn’t do it.”
I check my own thoughts at the door.
Fake News?
It’s a tactical counterpunch by a president who likes to counterpunch.
It’s a scary term that undermines the credibility of a working press that is employed to shine light where only darkness exists.
Fake News?
The national media needs to remember that stories without facts are fake.
I will probably never cover the White House. But I do cover city council. When a citizen says I am fake News. That hurts. But it reminds me to go back to the basics. Journalism 101. Facts. Fairness. Objectivity.
“Nobody cares what YOU think”, an old news director once yelled at me.
He was right.
Fake News?
Not here. Not me. Not Ever.