The allegation that the mainstream media disseminates “fake news” about the Trump administration often can seem overwrought, even a kind of caricature. Yet the nearly universal media response to President Trump’s news conference at which he addressed the Charlottesville violence can only reinforce it. One day this response may make a rich subject for future historians analyzing it as earlier historians probed witch-burnings, pogroms, and other outbreaks of mass hysteria. They likely will focus on the spectacle of sophisticated, experienced, well credentialed people—Chuck Todd, Jake Tapper, Joe Scarborough, to name three of dozens—responding to Trump’s comments on the tragic weekend as if they were, say, undergraduate social justice warriors at Middlebury College.
First, the transmission of facts, which might be the essential point of journalism. Trump approached the Trump Tower podium Tuesday afternoon hoping to talk about infrastructure. The media wanted to talk about Charlottesville (ignoring, not surprisingly, Chicago, where nine people were murdered over the weekend).
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