Last night I watched a daily video report on aviation news. The normally mild mannered and cautious reporter began a segment about someone illegally shooting down a drone that was doing photography of bridge under construction. She began the report with the surprising comment that “Hysteria drummed up by so-called journalists who cannot spell UAV” led to the shoot down, illustrating how pervasive distrust of the news media has become.

This blog has documented many reporting errors where the simplest of facts were wrong.

Today, the NY Times and their creative writer Gardiner Harris published a fantasy short story without realizing his own writing contradicted the story. The story was de facto retracted, later.

Read the headline and the first part of the article …

The story was widely shared on social media and published by global media.

The curtains were purchased by the Obama Administration and did not involve Ambassador Haley. Harris’ fantasy short story was a “hit piece”.

Later, the story was amended in a de facto retraction:

The way to respond to accusations of fictional news reporting is to double down on accuracy, objectivity and remaining calm. Unfortunately, the news industry continues to harm itself through self destructive behavior typical of middle school drama. This behavior is bewildering.

Separately, Trump should not criticize the media, as he does, calling them “fake news”, particularly with his reputation for telling lies and tall tales. He should focus on strategy and policy and ignore the media. Determining bias is not an exact undertaking, but identifying errors is often clear cut – but leave that to others and not the politicians who spin stories worse than creative fantasy writers.