Last night, KCAL credulously repeated Trump’s lies about Sprint.

If you turned on the news yesterday, you probably heard this story about Donald Trump taking a phone call from executives at Sprint, working that Make America Great Again magic, and hanging up the phone with the promise of Sprint creating 5000 jobs for Americans. Trump says that “Because of what’s happening and the spirit and the hope I was just called by the head people at Sprint and they’re going to be bringing 5,000 jobs back to the United States.”

Wow. That’s kind of amazing, isn’t it? If it’s so easy for Donald Trump to get on the phone and make that happen, why can’t that loser Obama do it? Why does Obummer hate America so much?

Oh. Wait. Sorry. I fell into the Stupidsphere for a moment.

The truth is, Donald Trump lied yesterday, Sprint went along with his lie, and then an appalling number of news organizations repeated the lie so much, it’s become accepted as truth in less than 24 hours. This, in spite of the common knowledge that Donald Trump is constantly lying about everything.

Despite what Trump and the press release from Sprint said (and what its CEO recently tweeted), these jobs were part of a previous announcement from Softbank (Sprint’s parent company) CEO Masayoshi Son — not the direct result of working with Trump.

I saw this lie repeated last night on the 10pm broadcast of my local news on KCAL 9, here in Los Angeles. It was upsetting to me, because KCAL is a trusted local news source for one of the largest media markets in the country, and it’s one of the only local news sources available to people who live here and don’t have cable or satellite. Here’s what I posted on Twitter about it:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This happened on the 10pm broadcast. It wasn’t a fast-breaking story that needed to be covered as it unfolded. Trump’s claim that he worked his magic on the phone had been debunked many times, earlier in the day.

First of all, Sprint announced these jobs back in April. Here’s the Kansas City Star: “Sprint Corp. is launching a nationwide service to hand-deliver new phones to customers in their homes. The Direct 2 You service, which first rolled out in a Kansas City pilot, will lead to the hiring of about 5,000 mostly full-time employees as it spreads nationwide.”

Second, the Japanese owner of Sprint, Softbank, announced in October that it was creating a huge tech investment fund.

Third, in December, Softbank’s CEO announced the fund again after a meeting with Trump, and said that one part of the whole package was the creation of 50,000 new jobs. Today, Sprint reluctantly conceded that its 5,000 jobs were part of the previously announced 50,000 jobs.

And finally, these jobs were announced yet again today.

That makes four times these jobs have been announced. Donald Trump was responsible for none of them.

As I said last night, there’s a huge difference between “Trump makes jobs happen” and “Trump claims he made jobs happen”.

Jennifer Pierce, who apparently works at KCAL, responded to me:

The problem with this response is that it doesn’t address the fundamental issue: the lie isn’t about whether the jobs are new or not. The lie is that he had anything at all to do with the decision. I pointed that out:

All of this was easily researched and fact-checked in a matter of minutes by me, and I’m not a professional journalist whose primary job and responsibility is to inform and educate the general public. This leads me to draw one of two conclusions: 1) KCAL’s news director knew Trump was lying but went ahead and ran the story for some reason I won’t speculate about. 2) KCAL didn’t do simple and basic fact checking for some reason and reported a story that was fundamentally untrue as fact.

Either one of those is completely unacceptable for a news organization. A lot of people went to bed last night thinking that Trump did something he didn’t do. Today, they are telling their friends and co-workers that Trump personally made 5000 jobs happen, because they heard it on the news.

Once more, from Engadget:

This is where we are, folks: Our president-elect is tying his name to something he didn’t have anything to do with, much like he did with “saving” 1,100 jobs at HVAC company Carrier, including 300 that weren’t moving to Mexico in the first place. In November, Trump exaggerated that he stopped Ford from moving a Kentucky production plant to Mexico. In reality Ford announced it wouldn’t move production of one model line to Mexico.

The most troubling thing here is that Sprint played along, even though, when pressed, it admitted the claims weren’t the result of working with Trump.

I would argue that the most troubling thing here isn’t actually that Sprint went along with Trump’s lie (Sprint wants deregulation, Trump wants to take credit for something he didn’t do, so they both benefit by agreeing to deceive the public). The most troubling thing here is that news organizations whose only job is to inform and educate the public, became an integral part of spreading this lie, and giving it credibility.

In this morning’s Plum Line in the Washington Post, Greg Sargent advises that the media stop giving Trump the headlines he wants, and, you know, do their job:

I would like to propose a rule of thumb for these situations: If the headline does not convey the fact that Trump’s claim is in question or open to doubt, based on the known facts, then it is insufficiently informative.

[…]

Look, it’s obvious that Trump has adopted a strategy of actively trying to game such headlines in his favor. Trump’s claims about Carrier jobs staying in Indiana turned out to be significantly less rosy upon closer inspection. And remember when Trump falsely claimed credit for keeping a Ford plant here that was going to stay anyway? It really doesn’t take much to convey it in a headline when Trump’s claim is in doubt.

[…]

Now that it’s obvious that President Trump will strategically employ exaggerated announcements of “saved” jobs to rig the headlines in his favor, maybe it’s time to rethink how to handle that, too.

We need to hold news organizations accountable, so that they will hold Trump (and anyone in government) accountable..

A lot of people don’t have the time, energy, or resources to separate truth from lies, and it’s not unreasonable for those people — for all of us, really — to expect fact checking from news directors and their reporters. Last night, KCAL failed in that primary responsibility. The 10pm broadcast I watched didn’t report the truth of this story; it amplified and gave credibility to a lie. That’s not okay, and KCAL should apologize to its viewers and correct the story.

34 thoughts on “Last night, KCAL credulously repeated Trump’s lies about Sprint.”

  1. It seems KCAL is allowing itself to be the thin edge of the wedge. I’m glad Wil is a voice willing to call them on their crap. I hope they heard, because the enabling of lies needs to stop, because the lies never will.

  2. Thanks for using your platform to talk about this. The media is being bullied by Trump and they’re trying to make nice with him. But ultimately they don’t work for him. They work for us. We need to keep calling them out, just like this

  3. “A lot of people don’t have the time, energy, or resources to separate truth from lies, and it’s not unreasonable for those people — for all of us, really — to expect fact checking from news directors and their reporters. Last night, KCAL failed in that primary responsibility. The 10pm broadcast I watched didn’t report the truth of this story; it amplified and gave credibility to a lie. That’s not okay, and KCAL should apologize to its viewers and correct the story.”

    With news stations running misleading, or actually false stories; Paul Ryan turning off the C-SPAN cameras and wanting to place fines on any of his peers that live stream from the floor; and the open distrust and hate of credible journalism by Trump and his supporters we are QUICKLY turning into a very, very scary place to be. Much quicker than I would have EVER imagined.

  4. The media is not being bullied or one-sided when it comes to Trump (or Hilary). This is not a current bad behavior by the media. This has been happening for more than a decade. Not always, but so called “reputable” media sources will state opinions as fact to the benefit of either party, the media should be held to account. I do agree, and this is common sense, that Trump did not make those jobs stay here.

    But, I also agree that if the profits are here then some of the jobs and the taxation of those profits should be here.

  5. Good work, Wil. But I guess, that Trump voters will not believe you. They will think, that you are lying, because you hate Trump.

    2016 was a shit year, but 2017 will be a hard one as well..

  7. It’s a shame to here your story about KCAL. Local news in my opinion is one of the last hopes for unbiased reporting to the mainstream. I understand the reality of running a station means you’ll need to rebroadcast a lot of national stories from other sources. I also understand with social media reporting news “fake or not” requires legit sources to rush their stories before a complete background check. Is this a case of businesses aligning themselves with the new administration looking for favors later on. I don’t know. What I do know is I need to pay closer attention to every story no matter who is reporting.

    Keep up the fight, promote truth, be kind, and don’t stoop they “their” level.

  8. It’s both frightening and frustrating that fake or distorted news is becoming the norm. You may not be a professional journalist, Wil, but as bloggers, it’s still incumbent on us to expose some of these absurdities. That’s not necessarily our role, but if so-called professional news people can’t or won’t do it, then who’s left to take on that task? A true democracy allows for any dedicated citizen to respond to whatever news is being dished out.

  9. Good points, Wil, but I have one quibble:
    KCBS/KCAL’s primary goal is making money, not informing/educating the general public. This is true of all commercial media.
    I’m a former reporter and, when you work for commercial news, you’re repeatedly told, “Get eyeballs. Get ears. Get clicks. That’s your job.”
    It is different in public media. The BBC and Pro-Publica do good work. NPR occasionally files a good story (tho it’s pretty f-ing rare these days).
    But as we’re swamped with the lies, disinformation and propaganda of the Trump administration, it’s vital that we find reporters and news outlets we can trust.
    If it’s a for-profit (commercial) shop, don’t trust it. I like the NYTimes and Wash Post. I get news from lots of sources, but I urge you and your readers to be very skeptical of all you hear, watch and read.
    Here’s the question I ask when I see or hear the news:
    “Why is this bastard lying to me?”
    Answer that and you’ll know a lot more than you’re being told.

    1. KCAL may have a goal of making money, but as a broadcast television licensee they are a “public trustee” of a licensed band of radio spectrum and as such have a primary duty to serve the “public interest.” This makes them different than all commercial media (newspapers, magazinses, even cabled new networks). If you deliberately misinform, or repeatedly misinform through negligence, you’re may not be operating in the public interest.

  10. And now there are articles about how Trump duped the media. But he didn’t dupe them, they duped themselves. They got lazy and complacent, so they didn’t vet the story. They just assumed the other journalists had done their due-diligence. Now they’re blaming a universally-known pathological liar for their own fuck-up. And you can damn well bet that they won’t be doing much reporting on getting called out for their fuck-ups. They certainly didn’t when their lazy reporting played a roll in getting Trump elected.

  11. I was looking for the quote ” a Lie will run around the world before the Truth has got its boots on” when I found this more apt and eerily prescient statement made by Jonathan Swift in 1710

    “Besides, as the vilest Writer has his Readers, so the greatest Liar has his Believers; and it often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect…”

  14. Thank you Wil for doing what the media couldn’t take the time to do. The manner in which media reports influences opinions, it’s no longer ‘just the facts’

  15. I would place the blame with the same parent company that has TBBT on their channel: CBS/VIACOM. As you know, we, in L.A., have our stations owned by the networks. So, if the parent company’s news service says one thing, then the local channel will just repeat it.

  16. Keep up the good fight, Wil. It DOES matter that they reported it incorrectly, and his followers will believe that he’s already making a difference.

    The shut-down/co-option of the media is frightening. When somebody challenged users of “fascist” to look up the definition, I found a troubling description of Trump, and it includes the muffling of media. I guess we didn’t learn from history.

  18. A lie repeated often enough becomes truth – Joseph Goebbels
    That’s why you need to check facts yourself.
    Don’t rely on media to do it for you, because there’s no profit in that for them.

    We may laugh and joke about how the Iraqi media lied to their public while they were being invaded by western terrorists, but we tend to forget that our media do exactly the same to us.

  19. Wil.

    When you write something like this, use the following as a guideline:

    1.) Yay, jobs will be created for PEOPLE WHO ARE WAY LESS FORTUNATE THAN I AM.
    2.) A politician is excited and tweeting about it though my research indicates he didn’t bring it about.

    Priorities.
    Context.

  20. Even though I’m not a journalist and never wanted to be, I have a degree in journalism. I wanted to be able to write well and be valuable in any industry. I care very much for good journalism and get peeved as can be when journalists fail to abide by their code of ethics and truth. When you fail to do that you fail to do your job.

  21. You should never fully trust a news outlet. QUESTION EVERYTHING! It disappoints me that you had a trusted news station. Be it intentional or merely a mistake the news organization got a story wrong, NO news outlet is perfect. Being who you are I would have thought you would have been part of something in the past that was news worthy but when you saw the reports you realized they messed up some important details.

    Example:

    News is just another form of entertainment. If you are really interested in the topic, you should always do your own research if you want to make sure you have the story right.

  22. Will, they all lie. That’s what politicians do, because politicians are con artists. That’s their skill and talent. Obama claims he created 15 million jobs. But when you dig into the numbers you find out that only 6% of those jobs are full time, and that he had a net loss of 1 million full time jobs during his 8 years. You find that full time employment is now all the way down to 1975 numbers. They all do it. Obama actually lied about every single promise he made in 2008. You can write down ever single promise he made during both campaigns, but especially the 2008, and then look at what he actually did. He actually did the exact opposite of every single promise. He did not come through or tell the truth about anything. Doesn’t that piss you off as much as Trump??? That’s our country in a nutshell today. Is Trump a horrible human being? Of course. And so is Clinton. The powers that be make sure that we have to vote between two horrible people. They do not care which one wins because either one is going to be their lackey. They lie their way in there, and then they just lie, lie, and lie. That’s what happens when the people let their most basic right devolve into a contest between the lesser of two evils instead of standing up and demanding better.

  23. Sprint’s support of the lie was probably intentional. It’s in Sprint’s best interest to give Trump credit for the 5,000 jobs. Why wouldn’t Sprint want an ally in the White House? Now Sprint is a team player on Trump’s good side.

  24. Things like this make me sad for the future of our country, at least under Trump and the GOP’s control :'(

  25. Trump once crashed an NYC AIDS fundraiser, got up on stage with actual donors, got photographed and then left—all without ever giving a penny to the cause. If he can lie about giving to an AIDS charity, we should not be shocked that he would falsely claim to have created jobs. His ego and deceit know no bounds.

  27. Great! I am reading some books by terry brooks getting ready for bed avoiding the need for a week and decided to read this blog and my momentary illusion that all is ok comes crashing to an end
    It gonna be a long 4 years

  28. Trump is like Berlusconi, do you want to know what will happen in US in the next years? what will Trump say or which will be the greatest lies he is going to tell? check what Berlusconi did in italy, what he said, which promises he made (1 MILLION new jobs…in a 60 millions country)

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