Last week, Congress held its first hearing on its investigation into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election and President Donald Trump’s claim that former President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower. With FBI Director James Comey’s testimony, we finally had hard, concrete evidence that Trump’s wiretap tweet was not true and that it was indeed a lie.
This is a serious turning point for us Americans because we now have confirmation that the president deliberately lied to the public.
Up until that point we had dealt with many lies and crazy conspiracy theories pushed by Trump, but they are usully brushed away or forgotten in a few news cycles. Some of his most famous assertions include the birther theory, that Sen. Ted Cruz’s father helped kill JFK and that Mexico would pay for the wall on our border.
Many news publications have refused to call Trump’s crazy-and-usually-false assertions what they usually turn out to be: lies. They argue that by calling Trump’s assertions lies, even when they are, it influences the reader too much and that reporters should avoid referring to them as lies as to objectively report the story. They believe that saying someone lied means accusing them of deliberately trying to misinform the public, so they are careful to describe Trump’s statements as lies.
Yes, calling Trump’s wacky conspiracy theories lies does indeed change how the reader views the story, but they change the reader’s perception for good reason. The current administration has shown that it twists the truth all the time and that they have no problem promoting outright false claims. If successful, the Trump administration’s efforts only have the result of do misinforming the American people.
These misinformation campaigns that the current administration has pursued, like the inauguration size argument and the wiretapping claim, are perfect tools to use to divert attention from other things. Just think about it: we’ve probably discussed Trump’s alleged ties to Russia and his wiretapping tweet more than we’ve discussed his attempts at passing a health care bill.
We journalists must do everything in our power to ensure that Trump’s lies don’t slide under the radar. It all starts off with Trump claiming that he was wiretapped, and it all ends with the President hiding important information from us or blaming the wrong person for a terrorist attack.
The old saying, after all, is that journalists have a responsibility to hold the president’s feet to the fire. This means that journalists must continue to apply pressure to the president so that they don’t try to deceive the public.
The media must do their job to ensure that the public knows when the President is trying to pull the wool over our eyes. We must be able to tell the American people when the president is trying to get them to forgot about a controversial piece of legislation with some crazy tweet.
This means that the media has to describe Trump’s craziness as lies. There is no way around this because we have a duty to fact-check the president. Trump will continue to do what he does best, and we cannot let this craziness take down our democracy.