Another battle in the War on Truth, this one involving the Washington Examiner, always known for it’s right-leaning tendencies, but never known heretofore to be merely stenographers of government generated propaganda.
Great moments in media: Trump's team gives the Washington Examiner an "exclusive" list of 205 supposed "historic" accomplishments he will campaign on; the Examiner just publishes it in full; Trump tweets about it as if it came from the Examiner. pic.twitter.com/4xa1t9Gt6l
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) January 1, 2019
Washington Examiner – “MAGA list: 205 ‘historic results’ help Trump make case for 2020 re-election.” True!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 1, 2019
It’s “true” because it came straight from Trump, did not pass go, did not collect two hundred dollars, just went straight to the presses. This is precisely how Trump sees the role of the press, to take his propaganda and publish it as fact. Trump and his cronies will create the propaganda, they only need Fox News and now, apparently, the Washington Examiner, to give them credence — that is, assuming that those outlets have any credence to begin with. The Washington Examiner used to lean right, but they didn’t used to just publish a press release and call it news — which makes this development rather alarming. This is just like Russia, where the head of state merely hands off his doctrine for the day to the state owned and controlled media, and they publish it, unthinking.
But then again, what else was Trump going to do, with the National Enquirer off his bench for the time being?
And what’s next, insightful commentary and analysis from David Dennison and John Barron? It’s enough to make one want to take the Journalism degree out of the frame and set fire to it.
Maybe we should start drafting the prequel to “1984” and explain how the Ministry of Truth came to be. It looks like that’s just where we are, right now. Trump’s whack a mole followers don’t know the difference between a fact and an opinion any more than he does, but the same cannot be said of the Washington Examiner. They need to be held accountable for this.
