Well, that was certainly a double-punch of a lesson on the modern media’s rush to judgment: two separate stories where bias — and hunger for clicks — led to “blockbusters” that soon proved … entirely wrong.
First came the BuzzFeed scoop, “President Trump Directed His Attorney Michael Cohen To Lie To Congress About The Moscow Tower Project.” The story, based on unnamed sources claiming that’s what Cohen told Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team, got picked up far and wide.
Pols jumped on it, too: House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) vowed “to get to the bottom” of what looked like a federal crime by Trump.
Then Mueller’s office debunked the story: “BuzzFeed’s description of specific statements to the special counsel’s office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office . . . are not accurate.”
It was far from the first “Trump Is Doomed” tale to fall apart: They’re a hallmark of coverage of this president.
But then came the furor over some Catholic high school boys’ encounter with a Native American activist down in DC. A viral video showed young Nick Sandmann standing still as the activist, Nathan Phillips, beats a drum and chants in his face.
Reports claimed the boys, some in Make America Great Again hats, had taunted Phillips and other Native Americans. Yet that was based only on Phillips’ claims — which changed rapidly as other video surfaced.
The longest tape shows a third group (Black Hebrew Israelites) harshly hectoring the boys, who answer with school cheers. Then Phillips marches into the boys’ midst, and up to Sandmann — the reverse of what the activist had claimed.
Yet the first, out-of-context video went viral under the Twitter caption, “This MAGA loser gleefully bothering a Native American protester.” Since that fit their prejudices, news outlets didn’t bother to get the boys’ account before publishing.
Last month, Gallup found less than half of Americans (45 percent) trust the media to report “fairly.” That lack of trust seems all too justified.
