For Fairness, Balance and Accuracy in News Reporting

While the media continue to champion the legacy of former President Barack Obama, some of his signature policies are rapidly being ended

or overturned by his successor, President Donald J. Trump. However, this does not mean that Obama’s policies weren’t a disaster for America during his tenure. Obama’s enduring legacy, far from a collection of his signature achievements, will be the decline of his own party and a lackluster economy, as well as the appeasement of dictators, and a world in chaos and disarray.

While it is Trump who has been frequently ridiculed—and he certainly uses Twitter to hit back—Obama took to Twitter to defend his legacy. He championed his economic policies, with “the longest streak of job growth in our history,” and how “today nearly every American now has access to the financial security of affordable health care.” Obama also claimed to have reestablished “U.S. leadership—leading with diplomacy & partnering with nations to meet global problems.”

In other words, Obama continues to claim that his presidency was a resounding success. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Obama’s economy is leaving millions of Americans behind. The UK Guardian reported that growth under Obama was “anemic.” They also pointed to the low labor participation rate, writing, “why fewer people are looking for work is a subject of much debate.”

Surely Obama’s many regulations, including those of Obamacare, have had something to do with the poor economic recovery. Peter Roff wrote for US News & World Report that the American Action Forum estimates the “economic cost of all the new federal regulations finalized since [Obama] became president” at a stunning “$870.3 billion.”

Contrary to Obama’s assertions about crafting a strong recovery, a recent Gallup study found that there was no economic recovery under his leadership. Rather, senior economist Jonathan Rothwell writes that “on a per capita basis, median household income peaked in 1999; the subjective general health status of Americans has declined, even adjusting for the aging population; disability rates are higher; learning

has stagnated; fewer new businesses are being launched; more workers are involuntarily stuck in part-time jobs or out of the labor force entirely; and the income ranks of grown children are no less tied to the income ranks of their parents.”

Rothwell also attributes an increase in part-time employment to the “rising burden of healthcare costs.” This claim was also made by Mortimer Zuckerman, who wrote for The Wall Street Journal that “slow growth” and the “perverse incentives of Obamacare” can be blamed for poor employment numbers.

In other words, Obama failed to turn the economy around after the Great Recession, which officially ended in June of 2009, and his policies directly contributed to anemic growth and a doubling of the national debt. Yet The New York Times reported in December that “President Obama Is Handing a Strong Economy to His Successor.”

The press failed to challenge Obama’s blatant lies because they support his liberal agenda, such as Obamacare. The Guardian reports that Obamacare was “the first social safety net created in more than 50 years. The law was a legacy-maker.”

Thus, as we have repeatedly argued, the media have tried to present Obama’s signature health care reform as successful in bringing health care access to average Americans. But having insurance with  large deductibles and skyrocketing premiums  has hardly equated to more Americans receiving care. In fact, The New York Times reported on how, under Obamacare, the deductibles are so steep that individuals were skipping vital medical procedures because they still could

AIM in the News

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WaPo Media Columnist:

Media Needs More Facts,

Fewer Pundits, to Regain Public

Trust

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The Real Opposition to

Trump page 5

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By Roger Aronoff

2017 | XLVI-1

The Obama Legacy

2 June-B 2011

Editor’s Message

in the News

A twice-monthly newsletter published by Accuracy in Media, Inc.

Editor: Roger Aronoff

4350 East West Highway #555Bethesda, MD 20814202-364-4401 | www.aim.orgPlease remember AIM in your will.

Your Letters

To the Editor: His Legacy isn’t over. The repercussions will go on for quite sometime. The Demo-crat party is quite willing to commit politi-cal suicide to keep Obama relevant and he just ain’t.John C.

Please send Letters to the Editor to:Accuracy in MediaAttn: Letters to the Editor4350 East West Highway #555Bethesda, MD 20814or email to info@aim.org

Please keep your submissions to 50 wordsor less. Letters may be edited for length.

AIM Editor Roger Aronoff ap-peared recently on the Philadel-phia, Pennsylvania Conservative Commandos Radio Show to talk about his recent column, “Obama’s Iranian Nuke Deal is a Major Challenge for Trump.”

On the show, Aronoff discussed how the U.S. government-run Ra-dioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty had recently published a column citing the Iran deal as “signed.” “The prob-lem is, nothing was ever signed,” he said.

“And the way this came out was Representative Mike Pompeo [R-KS], who was recently appointed by Trump to be the new CIA Direc-tor, kept pressing the State Depart-ment, ‘let me see the agreement, let’s see the signed agreement,’” said Aronoff. The reply from the State Department’s Julia Frifield stated, Aronoff said, that the Iran deal was “neither an executive agreement nor is it a signed agree-ment.” In other words, it was unen-forceable. On his website Pompeo called the Iran deal little more than a press release.

“Really what happened is Obama was so determined to add this as a legacy item that he did this deal even though they couldn’t really agree on the terms,” said Aronoff.

Dear Fellow Media Watchdogs: The long knives are out for President Donald Trump, and there is no sign that they will be put down any time soon. And not surprisingly, Barack Obama has already emerged to participate in the effort to delegitimize and ultimately bring down the Trump presidency. Nothing short of that will satisfy the left-wing mob that has emerged with contemptible self-righteousness. Remember when Hillary Clinton said she was “horrified” that Trump said during one of the debates that he wasn’t prepared to say he would accept the results of the

election, regardless of the circumstances? He said he would wait and see. The outrage poured out of politicians and media figures alike. How dare he say that. Yet it turned out to be Hillary, Obama and all of the leftist, so-called mainstream media that have refused to accept the results of the election. We get it. You hate Trump, and don’t think he belongs in the White House. That part of the process is over. Their efforts to recount the votes resulted in more votes for Trump, and the exposure of voter fraud that had taken place. Maybe not the three to five million il-legal voters that Trump suggested, but some significant number, and the effort was made. The badgering and threatening of electors should have brought prosecutions, but Obama and Attorney General Loretta Lynch were still in charge, so that wasn’t going to happen. Trump has his own style, and whether we like or not, he is going to do things his way. He’s made some rookie mistakes, such as the rollout of his executive order on immigration. On the one hand, he cleverly tied it to similar moves by Obama, targeting the same seven countries that were either designated by our State Depart-ment as state sponsors of terror, or were involved in a war. They were enshrined in a law backed overwhelmingly by Democrats and signed by President Obama. It was definitely not a Muslim ban, as the media came to call it. It didn’t target anyone from Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan or India, the countries with the largest Muslim populations. Then, on what the media quickly labeled the Monday Night Massacre, Trump fired Acting Attorney General Janet Yates for her announced refusal to defend or support Trump’s executive order, and she encouraged others in the Justice Department to do the same. The problem is, she didn’t have the right to stay on the job and not carry out the order. It was fascinating watching CNN cover the story. Don Lemon and Wolf Blitzer both jumped to Obama’s defense whenever someone made the comparison between Trump’s executive order and similar moves by Obama. The latest controversy is over Trump’s comments about the judge in Washington who ruled against the executive order that temporarily put a halt to immigration from seven designated countries, and established a review of refugee policy. Trump will be Trump, and it will be a bumpy ride that is sure to keep the media off balance and on full tilt.•

For Accuracy in Media Roger Aronoff

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not afford them even though they had enrolled in the health care program.

Despite its considerable flaws, the press rallied around Obama’s signature legislation when it was before the Supreme Court, in an attempt to ensure that the court did not gut this legislation. The media’s reporting focused almost exclusively on the dangerous effects of eliminating subsidies, and how this would affect millions of Americans. But the press ignored the fact that Obamacare wasn’t supplying quality care to its enrollees.

While much of Obama’s legislation and many of his executive orders can be rolled back, it is impossible to undo the destruction in the Middle East that has occurred as a result of Obama’s policies. His legacy is one of having ignored the rise of the Islamic State, and by precipitously removing troops from Iraq, he helped create a vacuum that allowed ISIS to grow. Obama originally dismissed the Islamic State as a “JV” team. Now, this terror group threatens the stability of both Iraq and Syria, operates in 18 countries, and is responsible for the murder of thousands.

Much of the time, Obama’s aspirations to success rely on his claims that the world would be worse off had it not been for his leadership. Saying that things could have been worse without Obama’s policy interventions is an argument based on counterfactual reasoning, as if the president could somehow know the future that he avoided. Yet President Obama often complained that his biggest problem as president was simply that he didn’t explain himself well enough.

No amount of explaining can undo the destruction that Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s leadership brought to Libya, which is currently a haven for the Islamic State and gripped by chaos.

As the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi pointed out in its 2014 and 2016 reports, the ultimate goal of the Obama administration was regime change in Libya. In fact, the administration switched sides in the War on Terror by facilitating the removal of Muammar Qaddafi, who had become one of America’s counterterrorism partners.

Instead of combatting terror, the CCB wrote, Obama and Secretary

Clinton “worked with the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood and materially aided known al-Qa’eda-linked militias to topple [Muammar Qaddafi’s] regime.” The CCB also found that the Obama administration repeatedly ignored “multiple advance warnings about an impending attack against the U.S. mission in Benghazi.”

In addition, the report stated, “The

President, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of Defense Panetta, and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey…must be required to answer for their dereliction of duty…in failing to provide appropriate protection in advance and to commit forces immediately to a rescue attempt the night of 11-12 September 2012.”

The Obama administration failed to anticipate the attack on the Benghazi Mission, despite the fact that it knew that there were 10 al-Qaeda and Islamist training camps nearby. It also failed to secure the ambassador and other State Department personnel despite a number of urgent security requests, and then blamed the attack on a protest inspired by a YouTube video while knowing that the attacks were the result of terrorism.

While much of the Benghazi scandal was blamed on Hillary Clinton because she was secretary of state when Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other brave Americans died, it is in fact Obama who is ultimately responsibility for this failure. Policies flow downward from the president to his subordinates.

The press has gone to great lengths to mislead about the administration’s Benghazi cover-up. It repeatedly criticized the House Select Committee on Benghazi as a waste of money, and concluded with each new factoid or document release that no smoking guns were uncovered. But, as we have written, no new revelations were necessary to demonstrate that Benghazi is an enduring scandal.

Obama, however, claimed that “I am very proud of the fact that we will, knock

on wood, leave this administration without significant scandal.…I will put this administration against any administration in history.”

This is part of the legacy of the Obama administration: incompetence by the president, at best, and malfeasance more likely. The press remains blinded to this fact. From Fast & Furious to Benghazi to the IRS targeting scandal, the Obama administration has left behind a trail of corruption and cover-ups. A number of individuals—The New York Times’ David Brooks, former Obama senior advisor David Axelrod, and, most recently, Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett—have claimed that President Obama served two terms without any scandals. This is a convenient narrative for the press because it ignores the many lies told by this administration.

One of President Obama’s biggest lies is that the Iran deal will somehow prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons. Far from hindering the mullahs, the Iran deal legitimizes Iran’s pursuit of nuclear technology and virtually ensures that it will eventually develop the bomb. Yet, as we reported, the Iran deal isn’t even signed—it is, instead, a set of political commitments.

“The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is not a treaty or an executive agreement, and is not a signed document,” the State Department’s Julia Frifield told Congressman Mike Pompeo (R-KS) in a letter.

The Iran deal commitments differ between Iran and the United States. The Iranian parliament, the Majlis, signed an agreement notably different than the one the P5+1 countries supported.

The media are obviously aware that this is not a signed deal, so why do they keep calling it one as if that is an insignificant detail? I believe it’s because they see their role as trying to help President Obama secure his legacy as the Nobel Peace Prize winner who was able to finally tame the Iranian theocracy, and save the world from nuclear destruction.

If the press were to be believed, the unsigned Iranian deal was to usher in a new rapprochement with Iranian leaders such as President Hassan Rohani. But Rohani’s decisions are subject to the will and desires of the hardline dictator and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei.

Obama also sent the Iranians $1.7 continued on page 4

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Much of the time, Obama’s aspi-rations to success rely on his claims that the world would be worse off had it not been for his leadership.

4 June-B 2011

billion in cash to obtain the release of four American hostages—all the while denying that this was a ransom payment. But the $100 billion and sanctions relief that Iran received as part of the unsigned nuclear deal was itself a ransom payment; it was designed, if not successfully, to dissuade the Iranians from developing nuclear weapons.

The result of Obama’s deal with the Iranians and the abstention on a key United Nations resolution to condemn Israeli settlements, was a worsening relationship with key ally Israel. The United Nations then appropriated funds to put together a blacklist of Israeli companies which could be targeted for sanctions. Since the changeover of administrations, the relationship between the U.S. and Israeli governments has dramatically changed for the better.

Obama’s foreign and domestic policies have reflected badly not only on his own legacy, but also have bled into the approval ratings for the Democratic Party, which supported Obama’s many endeavors. Trump’s victory leading to majorities in both houses of Congress has served as a referendum on Obama’s failures. We called this “Trump’s Amazing Victory Against a Stacked Deck.” The deck was stacked because of a complicit, incestuous media that worked hand-in-glove with Democrats to try to defeat Trump.

Hillary Clinton, far from running from Obama’s legacy, could not separate herself from appearing to represent a third term of the same. “Politically Obama has been the worst thing to happen to his party since Bill Clinton,” wrote Roff. “During the eight years he was president, the Democratic Party has lost 717 seats in state houses across the country, 231 seats in state senates, 63 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, 12 governorships and 12 seats in the United States Senate.”

These losses will likely continue. “But in 2018, Democrats must defend 25 seats (including the two Independent senators who caucus with the Democrats), while the GOP must defend only eight seats,” we noted.

In addition to Democrats losing political ground, the media have not escaped censure for supporting Obama and refusing to report on his many failures. Trump has repeatedly called

out the mainstream media for their unfair coverage of him and ongoing double standard. Trust in the media has plummeted by eight percentage points since 2015, and only 32 percent of Gallup’s respondents said they had a “great deal” or “fair amount” of trust in the media. Only 14 percent of Republicans trust the mainstream media.

Speaking of Gallup and approval ratings, the media gushed about how high Obama’s were as he left office. But what they failed to point out was that his average approval rating over his eight years was lower than that of Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. A lot of the reason for the high ratings at the end were presumably that Obama began to

look good to a lot of people compared to Hillary and Trump, who were engaged in a brutal knife-fight of a campaign that dragged them both down.

The media, in an effort to create an enduring, historic Obama legacy, has perpetuated a con game against the public for the past eight years, as well as during the 2008 campaign. It refused to report fairly on Obama’s communist mentor Frank Marshall Davis, and connections to radical, left-wing terrorists such as Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

It is little surprise, then, that a media so complicit and intent on elevating candidate Obama to the presidency would continue their misreporting and underreporting while he was president. The media continued to ignore and failed to report on stories that could damage the progressive agenda of “hope and change.” They largely repeated the administration narrative and failed to report evidence contradicting that narrative.

No figure represents as great an attack on Obama’s legacy as Donald Trump does. The new President has already begun steps to roll back Obama’s signature healthcare legislation, improve ties with Israel, get the economy moving again, revisit the unsigned Iran deal, and stop illegal immigration. In doing

so Trump has set himself up as the anti-Obama, the President who will undo the “progressive” accomplishments of his predecessor.

Trump faced an acknowledged media double standard in his campaign against Hillary Clinton. Jim Rutenberg of The New York Times suggested that the media abandon impartial reporting and engage in oppositional journalism against this candidate. While the mainstream media clearly favored Mrs. Clinton for president, the vitriol and venom against Trump originated, at least in part, with the fact that he ran against Obama as much as he was a counter to Hillary. The double standard against Trump wielded by the media shows no sign of abating, as Trump undoes the disastrous Obama legacy.

One legacy item that may surprise people is the number of bombs dropped by the U.S. during the Obama years. Despite Obama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize at the beginning of his presidency, in his final year alone, the U.S. dropped an average of approximately 500 bombs per week, on a total of seven different countries, mostly Syria and Iraq. But how often did we read about this, see the results, or hear about collateral damage or civilian casualties? Again, our media had no interest in reporting on that.

Among the other lasting legacy items, President Obama suffered 20 unanimous defeats before the Supreme Court in just his first five years in office. We called Obama “the least transparent” President in history, with good reason. And it wasn’t just us. “This is the most closed, control-freak administration I’ve ever covered,” said David Sanger of The New York Times. And his Times colleague James Risen  called  the administration “the greatest enemy of press freedom that we have encountered in at least a generation.”

This was a result of the administration’s war on journalists, during which they prosecuted more leakers than all previous administrations combined. And while I could go on, the neutering of the news media has to rank as one of President Obama’s most enduring legacy items. Regardless of all we’ve pointed to in this report, the degree to which the media closed their eyes to the scandals and failures of the Obama administration represents a permanent stain on the

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The media, in an effort to create an enduring, historic Obama legacy, has perpetuated a con game against the public for the past eight years, as well as during the 2008 campaign.

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The foreign media are fascinated by the U.S. President’s war against the American press.

A reporter for an Argentinian paper emailed me asking whether Donald J. Trump will attempt to do to the U.S. media what Latin American despots have done to opposition journalists in their own countries. The big difference is that we have a First Amendment that protects freedom of the press.

But that doesn’t mean that the Trump administration can’t recognize the nature of the press and take appropriate action. “The media here is the opposition party,” Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon tells The New York Times. This is a matter of fact and not opinion. Surveys going back to the days of President Franklin D. Roosevelt show that the national media was allied with the Democratic Party. The WikiLeaks emails showed actual collusion between the major media and the Democratic Party. Trump is simply recognizing reality and acting accordingly.

Freedom of the press is guaranteed, but it does not and should not mean automatic physical access to the White House. Rumors of plans to move the White House press corps out of the White House itself and into another location should become reality. A bigger location would accommodate alternative sources of news and information.

By opening up the White House press briefings to alternative news and information outlets, Press Secretary Sean Spicer would be doing the American people a great public service. He is already giving conservative news outlets a chance to cover national news. The Associated Press (AP) has run a story expressing anger that a news reporter associated with the conservative outlet LifeZette was picked by Spicer to ask the first question at Tuesday’s White House briefing. Before the advent of President Trump, the AP said, “major news outlets were traditionally called upon to open White House press conferences and

briefings.” The AP wants that tradition to

continue. It wants special rights and special recognition because it considers itself a “major” outlet. There is no reason to accept this view of the world. The Internet revolution has changed everything.

It’s to Sean Spicer’s credit that he is recognizing the changing nature of the media and calling on reporters in press briefings who have no ties to the “major” outlets. Trump can use these outlets to get his point of view across to people. Of course, he also uses Twitter to communicate directly with the American people, bypassing the media.

But the foreign media should not worry. No matter how mad President Trump gets at the media, he can’t shut them down. He can’t take the road of Latin American despots. However, Trump can use anti-trust laws to break up media monopolies.

Another initiative that serves the public’s right to know is found in one of the President’s executive orders, titled, “Executive Order: Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States.”

It says, “To better inform the public regarding the public safety threats associated with sanctuary jurisdictions, the secretary shall utilize the Declined Detainer Outcome Report or its equivalent and, on a weekly basis, make public a comprehensive list of criminal actions committed by aliens and any jurisdiction that ignored or otherwise failed to honor any detainers with respect to such aliens.”

This is a subject the liberal media shy away from. They don’t want to highlight the crimes of illegal aliens. In fact, most of the major media don’t even use the term “illegal alien” anymore.

The crying need for investigative reporting into the illegal alien problem is illustrated by the case of Wendy Uruchi Contreras, described by The Washington

Post as “an immigration rights activist” who works at CASA de Maryland, an illegal alien support group. It turns out that she is an illegal alien herself and now faces deportation. She got caught after pleading guilty to drunk driving (she says she had two margaritas at a restaurant). She had been in the country illegally for 14 years.

Ironically, Contreras says she fled Spain in 2002 “after enduring years of abuse from her alcoholic stepfather.”

It also turns out that she is a member of the Washington-Baltimore News Guild, a “home for journalists, digital and nonprofit staff across the mid-Atlantic region.” The Newspaper Guild/ Communications Workers of America is an affiliate of the AFL-CIO.

Needless to say, the AFL-CIO voted during the 2016 presidential campaign to endorse Hillary Clinton for president.

Overall, Trump won 43 percent of the votes in union households. It’s doubtful that Trump will ever win much support from members of The Newspaper Guild. They are busy demanding that Contreras be allowed to stay in the U.S., despite being here illegally and getting drunk behind the wheel.

This action reflects the views of most liberal journalists. They don’t care about the rights and lives of ordinary Americans exposed to illegal alien drunk drivers on the roads. They would rather write stories denouncing Trump for deporting the criminals.

Here’s how The Newspaper Guild is reporting the story: “A young

institution of the free press in this country. The media’s pent up energy and desire to be thought of as speaking truth to power, and holding the powerful

accountable, is all coming out now in their rage and transparent hatred of the Trump administration.

But the Obama legacy will live on.

Roger Aronoff is the Editor of Accuracy in Media, and a member of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi. He can be contacted at roger.aronoff@aim.org.

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By Cli� KincaidThe Real Opposition to Trump

6 June-B 2011

Washington Post  media columnist Margaret Sullivan disagrees with Sean Hannity

that journalism is dead, but she admits that it is suffering from some self-inflicted body blows—namely the sharp drop in public trust—and she’s advising her colleagues on how to restore it.

“‘Maybe this situation calls for a return to the old view, which asks for less analysis and more reporting, less personality and more facts,’ said David M. Shribman, executive editor of the  Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, who spent 25 years in Washington with the  New York Times, the  Wall Street Journal  and the Boston Globe, where he won a Pulitzer Prize for history-conscious political columns.

Consider: The last time trust in the media was sky-high was in the mid-1970s. Back then, more than seven in 10 Americans gave reporters and editors the thumbs-up, according to studies. (It has been sinking ever since, dropping to 32 percent last year, according to a Gallup poll.)”

What a novel idea—more reporting, less opinion—and maybe not working so hard to elect a president so that even the least informed voters can see through their agenda.

Sullivan says that despite the low marks for trust, the media rate highly when it comes to being a watchdog over government corruption. But according to Amy Mitchell, director of journalism

research at the Pew Research Center, that is offset by the high numbers of those who see bias, which hurts trust.

Trust in the media has been eroding for decades as the media decided that advocating for a liberal agenda was more important than being accurate. And they were largely able to get away with it since they controlled the media outlets, from broadcast networks to newspapers and radio.

All of that changed with the launching of  Fox News  on cable in 1996 and the emergence of the Internet  soon after, giving conservatives an opportunity to expose liberal media bias to an audience that had grown distrustful of the media over the years.

Liberals no longer fully control the media, with  Fox News  dominating cable news ratings, and sites like  Breitbart,  Drudge Report,  Daily Caller  and  Newsmax  attracting a large and loyal following, much to the dismay of the the liberal media.

Sullivan, however, is hopeful that the media can reverse the trend if they focus on what she sees as their true role:

“Trust in journalism may never get back to the post-Watergate level. But by holding government accountable, emphasizing accuracy and standing firm for factual reality, we can regain some of what’s lost.”

That’s pretty decent advice. But given their coverage of President Trump to date—and with Trump’s frequent tweets about the “dishonest media”—it’s not likely that the public’s view of the media will improve anytime soon.

In an interview with  The Wrap, CNN anchor Jake Tapper said, “the media is in a rough place right

now,” and added that they have a lot of work to do to regain the public’s trust

after completely misreading the election:“Obviously there was a lot of

misreading of information. I don’t know one poll that predicted Wisconsin was going to go for Trump, and it did fairly convincingly…We in the analysis department relied too heavily on those numbers, which are just snapshots based on models; they’re not facts…The media is in a rough place right now. We have a lot of work to do to regain ground with our readers, viewers and listeners, providing them with as much information as possible and asking appropriately tough questions. I hope that we in the media rise to the challenge.”

Tapper also commented on whether CNN was “complicit” in creating the Trump phenomenon:

“I’m not going to get into personnel decisions related to the Trump reporting process…I only know of one network president that acknowledged running many Trump rallies start to finish, and

that’s Jeff. Fox and MSNBC did too, but I haven’t heard anything from them. I certainly understand the criticism and I agree with Jeff. I didn’t do it on my show, but that said, I think that we had some of the best debates, we had some of the toughest questions, we had some of the most probing interviews, and ultimately the voters went to the polls and they picked who they picked.”

The media benefited greatly from their coverage of Trump, as he boosted ratings across the board. But that coverage also showed just how Trump’s message was resonating in traditionally blue states—which the media and Hillary Clinton ignored—resulting in her stunning election loss and plenty of retrospection on how they managed to get the election results so wrong.

Fredericksburg mother and union member is facing deportation back to the abuse that she fled 14 years ago.” Really? She has no option except to go back to being abused by an alcoholic?

This is the kind of nonsensical garbage we get from the media about the illegal alien problem. Getting “alternative facts” into the hands of the American people about such cases is a worthwhile

endeavor. Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM

Center for Investigative Journalism, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org

2017 | XLVl-1

By Don Irvine

By Don Irvine

WaPo Media Columnist: Media Need More

Facts, Fewer Pundits, to Regain Public Trust

CNN’s Tapper: “The Media Is In a Rough

Place Right Now” After Blowing the Election