Category: Television

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:

https://twitter.com/wilw/status/814365112718872576

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:

https://twitter.com/wilw/status/814374696057643008

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.