Press briefing confrontation between journalists and White House over 'fake news'
Deputy Press Secretary Huckabee Sanders accused media of faking news.
(Web Desk) - It seems as if the Trump administration’s troubles with the media are far from over with reporters and members of the White House press office once again locking horns, this time over the quickly emerging problem of fake news.
Trouble began when during the daily White House press briefing a reporter from Brietbart News asked White House Deputy Press Secretary Huckabee Sanders about the President’s Twitter comments concerning a CNN report that had been retracted following concerns by the channel that it had not gone through the basic editorial procedures.
Fake News CNN is looking at big management changes now that they got caught falsely pushing their phony Russian stories. Ratings way down!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 27, 2017
So they caught Fake News CNN cold, but what about NBC, CBS & ABC? What about the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost? They are all Fake News!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 27, 2017
Basing his query on Trump’s comments the reporter asked: "Does the White House not believe that CNN’s response was good enough?"
“I don’t know if it’s the response isn’t good enough for the President. I think it’s the constant barrage of fake news at this President”, Sanders replied. “The outlet you’ve referenced has been repeatedly wrong, and that has had to be pointed out and corrected”.
Sanders then continued in this thread saying that the press had often faked coverage of other White House issues such as recent efforts to introduce more robotics care options into the Department of Veteran Affairs treatment arsenal and had given too much media attention to accusations placed upon the Trump Administration such as the Russia probe into possible collaboration between Donald Trump campaign officials and Moscow.
This reply was not received well by the reporter.
“Does this President actually expect us not to report on stories of foreign countries trying to impact our elections," asked Charlie Spiering, Breitbart’s White House Correspondent.
“You’re implying to everybody right here, right now in those words that we’re lying", Brian Karem, with the Sentinel Newspapers, said.
He then said that in media reporting, journalists were replaceable because if they gave false news the public had the choice of not reading them or switching the channel. Brian further said to Sanders that the administration had been “elected to serve for four years at least, there’s no option other than that” and that statements such as this only inflamed people all over the country by giving the impression that only the President was right while everyone else was fake news.
We are real news Mr. President. #realnews
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) February 18, 2017
So, when we are wrong we correct ourselves but when has POTUS ever done that? We are not FAKE news.
— Brian J. Karem (@BrianKarem) June 27, 2017
However despite facing this tirade Sanders appeared to remain calm and said that she disagreed. “If anything has been inflamed, it is the dishonesty with the news media," she said. “I think it’s outrageous for you to accuse me of inflaming a story when I’ just trying to answer the question”.
The daily press briefing at the White House is turning into a problem for reporters. Sometimes the briefing does not take place on time and at others the Trump Administration has not allowed video or audio equipment in the briefing room.
With video inputs from The Independent.
