In his continued condemnation of the American media (and arguably the First Amendment itself), Donald Trump told an audience of U.S. troops in Florida on Monday that “the very, very dishonest press doesn’t want to report” on terrorist attacks that take place around the world, BuzzFeed News reports.
While this is clearly a simple matter of Trump’s personal beef with the news media, the White House released a list of terrorist attacks that have occurred since September of 2014 that “did not receive adequate attention from Western media sources.”
Here’s the list the White House sent of attacks they feel “did not receive adequate attention from Western media sources.” pic.twitter.com/lj8eOZQfnY
— Kevin Liptak (@Kevinliptakcnn) February 7, 2017
This list doesn’t make a lot of sense. As BuzzFeed itself demonstrates by linking to its own articles covering the majority of these attacks, as well as those by other news sources, the claim that the media doesn’t cover these attacks is simply not true. Trump seems to be using arbitrary standards to claim the media coverage of terror is inadequate—ridiculousness along the same lines as him firing Sally Yates for disagreeing with him.
Attacks on the list include the Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris, the San Bernardino attack, the truck crash and shooting in Nice, and the suicide bomber in Istanbul, all of which Her Campus has reported on in one or multiple articles, by the way. And we’re not a daily newspaper or cable station with tons of resources.
BuzzFeed themselves sorts the list of attacks into two categories: “high-profile attacks that received massive amounts of media coverage” and “smaller attacks—that also received coverage.” So…is the White House just spouting more alternative facts? It’s hard to know anymore.
In the end, “BuzzFeed News researched all 78 incidents on the list and found Western news coverage for all but seven of them.” As for the remaining seven, those “were likely covered as well, but the White House provided too little information to narrow them down.” This makes sense, as the list provided by the White House only included cities, months and years for attacks—not specific dates or number of victims, which would make it much easier to find coverage.
Someone let me know when this nightmare is over. Until then, I’ll be over here, proudly representing “dishonest” media and reporting on alternative facts and all their truth!