The iconic photograph of a 2-year-old Honduran girl crying as her mother is questioned by a U.S. Border Patrol agent reached the cover of Time magazine before it was revealed that the toddler wasn’t caught up in President Trump’s zero-tolerance border policy and wasn’t separated from her family.
For the White House, the misrepresentation of the photo and its use on the magazine cover with Mr. Trump staring down at the child is one of this year’s most egregious examples of “fake news” that Trump officials say is intentionally used to try to take down the president.
The widely published photograph tops a long list of news items during the past two years that damaged the Trump administration before being retracted, corrected or otherwise proved false.
Fake news appears to be everywhere and, contrary to denials by TV news anchors and White House correspondents, media watchdogs say the problem is real.
American University communications professor Richard Benedetto said a bombardment of news stories that are biased, unbalanced and often just plain wrong has left the public “shell-shocked” and distrustful of the press.
“There is definitely a lot of bad news reporting going on,” said Mr. Benedetto, a former White House correspondent for USA Today.
The volume of bombshell reports hitting the Trump administration that later turned out to be false is stunning.
Here are a few of the stories that had to be corrected:
⦁ NBC News reported in May that federal investigators had wiretapped the phone of Mr. Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen. Hours later, the network corrected the anonymously sourced story, saying the government was monitoring the source of calls but not eavesdropping on the conversations.
Read the rest at: Fake News