Editor For Major Newspaper Promises: We Won't Call Out Trump Lies
http://oliverwillis.com/editor-major-newspaper-promises-wont-call-trump-lies/Editor For Major Newspaper Promises: We Won’t Call Out Trump Lies
January 1, 2017 Oliver Willis
The editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal, Gerard Baker, has publicly promised that his newspaper will continue refusing to use the word “lie” when reporting on lies by Donald Trump.
Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press on the first day of the new year, Baker was asked by host Chuck Todd if he would use the word “lie” to refer to Trump’s words and actions, the editor refused.
“I’d be careful about using the word, ‘lie.’ ‘Lie’ implies much more than just saying something that’s false. It implies a deliberate intent to mislead,” he said.
Baker then pointed out Trump’s lie during the presidential campaign in which he said that he saw “thousands” of Muslims celebrating in New Jersey after the 9/11 attacks, and said even though the reporting showed that what Trump claimed was completely untrue he would not be comfortable describing it as a lie.
“I think if you start ascribing a moral intent, as it were, to someone by saying that they’ve lied, I think you run the risk that you look like you are, like you’re not being objective.”
For a major newspaper editor to decide that calling out a lie by the incoming president is out of bounds is a major victory for Trump. As he takes control of the levers of power of the presidency, he can feel secure in the fact that no matter what he says, no matter how absurd or out of touch with reality it is, the Wall Street Journal (which has the same owner as Fox News Channel, Rupert Murdoch) will not call what he says a “lie.”
In 2014 the Wall Street Journal ranked second for circulation among all national newspapers, with a total daily average circulation of 2.3 million, behind USA Today and ahead of the New York Times.
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Using your example, anyone who says "I am 40 feet tall" could be assumed to be lying because the statement is false on its face and no one, including the speaker, could believe it was true (unless he was in the grip of a psychotic delusion). So of course he would be lying because he had to have known it was false. Making a false statement while knowing it to be false necessarily assumes that there had to have been "a deliberate intent to mislead." The WSJ is using weasel words (a/k/a "bullshit"
to defend its refusal to call a lie a lie.
Tap-dancing around Emperor Cheeto, straining to avoid ruffling his delicate feathers, saying this and not that, rather than calling things what they are in reality.
The Trumpkins and compliant media are all aboard the anti-PC train EXCEPT when it comes to talking about their figurehead. Then their own brand of PC gets applied. Example: when Drumpf starts talking about nukes, his surrogates inform us that such frank talk is "refreshing" and is just another instance of their boss "telling it like it is."
