Examples of real fake news
Actress Meryl Streep reminds us that the media is a bastion of unbiased truth, and President Donald Trump is trying to destroy the First Amendment by tweeting about “fake news.”
However, history will not let us forget real “fake news.”
Walter Duranty was a New York Times reporter who wrote that stories of famine in the Ukraine were “malignant propaganda.” However, Duranty later admitted that as many as 10 million people had perished from Joseph Stalin’s man-made famine.
Herbert Matthews, also of the New York Times, reported that Fidel Castro was driving an anti-communist revolution. Castro told Matthews, “Without your help, the revolution in Cuba would never have been.”
Walter Cronkite, after the Tet offensive victory, reported that the Vietnam War could not be won. Cronkite’s reporting on Tet was akin to telling Allied troops to return to England after the Normandy invasion.
The media coverage of Trump is over 90 percent negative. It seems that mainstream media loves Stalin, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, but hates Trump. Unbiased truth?
Stephen Calvert
Campton
This story was originally published February 21, 2018 at 7:02 PM with the headline "Examples of real fake news."