Media Mistakes in the Trump Era: Sharyl Attkisson

Sharyl Attkisson is one of the sources I refer to often for an objective (I think!) take on the news. Attkisson was a correspondent and anchor at CBS News, PBS, CNN and in local news for thirty years. She also won the Emmy Award five times, and received the Edward R. Murrow award for investigative reporting. 

With that as background I'm sharing a link to Attkisson's website in which she tracks how many "mistakes" the news media has been making in reporting on president Trump. As of this posting her list contains 119 mistakes! 

https://sharylattkisson.com/2020/03/50-media-mistakes-in-the-trump-era-the-definitive-list/

She introduces this list as follows:

[A]s self-appointed arbiters of truth, we’ve largely excused our own unprecedented string of fact-challenged reporting. The truth is, formerly well-respected, top news organizations are making repeat, unforced errors in numbers that were unheard of just a couple of years ago.

 Our repeat mistakes involve declaring that Trump’s claims are “lies” when they are matters of opinion, or when the truth between conflicting sources is unknowable; taking Trump’s statements and events out of context; reporting secondhand accounts against Trump without attribution as if they’re established fact; relying on untruthful, conflicted sources; and presenting reporter opinions in news stories—without labeling them as opinions.

I think there are several factors at play here. One is that Trump flies fast and loose with his rhetoric. As Scott Adams probably would say, Trump exaggerates or misstates facts but is shooting in the right direction. (As one reporter once said, Trump's critics take him literally but not seriously while his supporters take Trump seriously but not literally.)

The second factor is that the "mistakes" in their reporting. I'm sure some of these mistakes are honest, maybe driven by the desire to break a story first without taking time to corroborate. But I also think some of these errors reveal the news media's bias and disagreement with Trump's policies while denying it. As Attkisson states the reporters and editors have appointed themselves as arbiters of truth. I think the desire to push a preferred narrative and the belief that they have a monopoly on the truth conspire to produce this steady flow of mistruths.