The real cost of Trump’s ‘fake news’ accusations
in Russia, Syria’s most powerful ally, Trump’s broadsides against U.S. news outlets are being used to dismiss reports that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad deployed chemical weapons against his own citizens earlier this month:
the Russians had a ready answer borrowed from Mr. Trump himself.
As the pro-Kremlin newspaper Izvestia put it, “Apparently it was for good reason Donald Trump called unverified information in the mass media one of the main problems in the U.S.”
It was the best evidence I’ve seen of the folly of Mr. Trump’s anti-press approach. You can’t spend more than a year attacking the credibility of the “dishonest media” and then expect to use its journalism as support for your position during an international crisis — at least not with any success.
.. When there is an international dispute — as there is between the United States and Russia over who was behind the chemical attack in Syria — it is in the president’s best interest for the reporting of U.S. news outlets to be regarded as legitimate on the world stage. Yet Trump claims constantly that The Washington Post, New York Times, CNN and others are not to be believed.
.. Last week, for example, the White House issued a two-sentence, information-starved summary of a phone call between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. China, meanwhile, issued a 14-paragraph statement describing its version of the conversation.
.. Rex Tillerson mostly avoided reporters on a visit to Moscow, in keeping with his previously stated position that “all of the things we’re going to do, you will know them after they’ve happened.” Because Tillerson’s team refused to keep U.S. journalists up to date throughout the visit, Russia was in control.