I found this odd poll today on my Facebook feed:
There are a lot of things wrong with polls like this. Whom do we trust more? A single person or a news corporation? That makes little sense as it is. I guess it means whose word, whose honesty, do we trust more?
CNN is thousands of reporters, correspondents, news professionals, with decades of history. Some might be “dishonest” to use a Trump word. But not every one of them. Not all of them. There is no conspiracy of CNN news professionals that have conspired to lie to make Trump look bad.
And why is this a thing all of a sudden? Do we really believe that CNN, or any other news organization, like the Washington Post or the New York Times all of a sudden became evil and dishonest because we have a new president? Surely that didn’t happen. If CNN were as dishonest to the core as Trump seems to indicate, it could not have just started last November. They would have been dishonest all along, or at least for a few years, right? Or do we think they just had a meeting after the election and decided from now on they were all going to make shit up?
Trump has lied many times. This is evident and documented. He has said things one day and denied saying them the next day. There are probably hundreds of examples, on video, of this. Trump lies. I really have a hard time understanding how 89% of Republicans can then say they trust Trump. But they are not saying they trust Trump, are they? They are saying they trust Trump more than CNN, that’s all. So if I am a Republican, and I trust Trump just a smidgen more than CNN, I’d have to say Trump, and obviously, 9 out of 10 will say that. Still, it boggles my mind. Trump lies so obviously, so unabashedly, I certainly wouldn’t trust him with my children, or my money, or my business. But then again, I am not a Republican, I am an Independent.
When we don’t trust CNN, we apparently don’t trust what they say. CNN’s investigative reporters, like all investigative reporters, are interested in going after the truth. If you are a reporter and you get caught lying, you don’t last very long in your job. You can’t afford dishonesty. Your boss will fire you. So I just don’t buy that CNN is conspiring to hurt Trump. CNN’s reporters try to tell the truth.
Could it be that it’s that truth that the Republicans just don’t like? When you don’t like the truth, but you know deep down that it is the truth, the easiest thing to do is to deny it, call it fake news. And I think that’s what Trump is doing. Trump needs adulation, and anything but adulation is therefore inimical, and the target of his wrath.
Here is the biggest problem I have with all that: If CNN is really dishonest, we can turn it off and listen to something else. If the New York Times is dishonest, we can just not read it. Then it no longer does damage. I have to believe that for every dishonest news outlet there is another one that’s honest. We as consumers get to choose what we want to read or listen to. That’s a good thing.
We as consumers do not get to choose what our president says and does, and if the president lies, we can only expose those lies as what they are. But he gets to keep going. In contrast, the news reporters who lie get fired.
I am an Independent, and I am not going to say that I trust CNN more or less than I trust Trump. It does not matter and it’s an irrelevant comparison. CNN is a news outlet that I can ignore. Trump is the President of the United States.
And I don’t trust him whatsoever.