Our media is known to be a joke, so much so that they're actually less trusted than politicians. Let's take a look at how they did covering the first week of the Trump presidency. We have made a selection of the top five fake news items that were pushed by our media. We have largely limited ourselves to referencing the New Zealand Herald, but their stories were fairly typical for the kind of rhetoric that we found across the board. Since we don't want to direct traffic to any deficient publications, we used archive.is links throughout this article.
1. The Inauguration Crowd Photo
It didn't take long for the US media to start circulating photos showing that Trump's crowd was smaller than Obama's crowd, and our media followed suit. Now, if this claim were true, it wouldn't come as a surprise. The weather wasn't that great, radical leftist had threatened violence and disruption, and most members of Trump's "working class" base were probably working on that Friday morning.
You undoubtedly have seen the photo comparing the two crowds. These was just one problem with this photo: it was taken early in the morning before everyone had arrived. See this tweet, a picture from Japanese media, or even CNN's Gigapixel for the truth.
Despite this, on their Friday "week in review" video, 1NEWS still used the fake photo.
2. The Inauguration Viewership
Rather than letting the photo go, President Trump and his team fought back against the false narrative, resulting in a prolonged argument with the media about how many people actually watched the inauguration. In a mid-week story about the back-and-forth, the NZ Herald even included the out-of-context crowd photo again.
In large part, the accusations of the media were against Press Secretary Sean Spicer, who said, "This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe."
While the exact numbers will probably never be known, it would not be unreasonable to assume this claim to be correct, especially since the official ratings do not take online viewership into account.
3. The Illegal Vote
In response to Trump's repeated statements that he would have won the popular vote too if it were not for millions of illegal immigrant votes, the NZ Herald claimed "there is no evidence to support Trump's claim." Yet, 2 years ago, the Washington Post, one of the sources that the NZH buys much of its "news" from, claimed that "non-citizens could decide the November election," and just a few days ago provided proof that Hillary Clinton received at least 800,000 illegal votes. If it is that easy to find nearly a million non-citizen votes, imaging what a real investigation might uncover.
4. International Abortion Funds
In a story where the headline doesn't live up to the hype, the NZH claimed Trump "strips women of abortion rights." The article itself goes on to prove the headline false:
Trump reinstated the Mexico City policy as one of his first moves in the White House.
The policy enforces a ban on providing federal money to international groups that perform abortions or promote the option.
This policy has been reinstated by every Republican president since Ronald Reagan. Nothing "new" here, just fake news from fake journalists.
5. White House Leaks
Today, with a rather sensational headline, the NZH claims that "leaks out of White House cast Donald Trump as a clueless child." It provides no sources, no evidence. It is just hear-say, the kind you would expect from a B-grade gossip rag.
It's their #1 story of the day, and it wasn't even written by them. As President Trump would say, "sad."
An anonymous psychiatrist has informed Right Minds NZ that he believes the New Zealand Herald is suffering from a severe condition known as "Trump Derangement Syndrome". The condition is usually fatal.
Have we missed anything? Let us know in the comments.