MSM's fake news pile-up

"Errors From The Press Are Piling Up In The Opening Weeks Of The Trump Administration" is a scary review of the mainstream media's sloppy journalism since the start of the President Trump's administration. Basically, it shows that journalistic standards for verifying stories have dropped to almost no standards at all.

Here is the first example from the story:

The Trump administration eases sanctions on a Russian intelligence agency.

NBC reported Thursday that the Trump administration was easing sanctions on the FSB, one of Russia’s primary intelligence agencies. Peter Alexander, NBC’s national correspondent, tweeted, “US Treasury Dept easing Obama admin sanctions to allow companies to do transactions with Russia’s FSB, successor org to KGB.”

Less than an hour later, he wrote, “Source familiar w sanctions says it’s a technical fix, planned under Obama, to avoid unintended consequences of cybersanctions.” His initial and incorrect tweet received nearly seven thousand retweets and the correction has less than 300 retweets.

Vanity Fair is still running the uncorrected article: “Russian Stocks Surge As Comrade Trump Eases Relations With Vlad.”

Among the other "botched stories or conflicting reports":

• The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice were blindsided by Trump’s executive order on immigration and refugees.
• Steve Bannon went to visit Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly to convince him to temporarily ban certain green card holders.
• The Trump administration forces the resignations of several senior Secret Service officials.
• Trump thinks Sean Spicer overdid it in his first appearance. Or does he?
• The Associated Press and CNN can’t agree whether Trump threatened to send troops into Mexico. 
• Reuters screws up the timing of Trump’s executive order.

Consider the sources for these screw-ups: NBC, Vanity Fair, New York Times, Washington Post, New York magazine, The Week, Mother Jones, The Atlantic, Associated Press, and Reuters. Kudos to CNN for looking good in this story.

But the problem here is the MSM has become what they claim to hate: "fake news". And I blame the editors for this. They should be throwing these stories back at their writers with a loud, "Get me confirmation on this FIRST!" Instead, the editors are letting their own confirmation bias drive their print decisions.

If the MSM keeps this up, they will eventually be viewed with a credibility comparable to Pravda, the old Soviet newspaper.

Even worse, if (some would say "when") Trump does something really bad or illegal, the press won't be believed. The boy can only cry wolf so much before he gets ignored.

The MSM has a responsibility to "speak truth to power". They have ignored it for the past 8 years under Obama. But now that they are back to being able to do their jobs without interference from their own ideology, they no longer "speak truth". Instead, they fling mud and hope it sticks. This is political propaganda, not journalism.