Media will now try to wave off the Trump koi pond story as a silly little misadventure. Don't let them. It was shameful malpractice.
The "reporters" who got the Trump koi story rolling were DELIBERATELY LYING. They knew what really happened.
The countless "reporters" who perpetuated the story were ignorant and lazy. They're not supposed to be ignorant and lazy.
Reporters are supposed to be purveyors of fact. They constantly posture as such. They claim "fake news" is an unfair smear of them.
It matters a great deal that a huge number of them lazily retweeted or re-reported a 100% false, deliberately MANUFACTURED story.
And it matters a very great deal that far more people saw the false story than the belated retractions and tepid apologies.
So far, I don't see any heads rolling over this, no anguished "here's how we got this wrong and we'll never do it again" diagnosis.
It's just being treated as a silly little thing and let's move on. But it's not little. A false story penetrated a great deal of mediaspace.
And the truth was simple and obvious. The full video was out there. This is not a matter of opinion or interpretation of a complex event.
In addition to media bias and dishonesty, it also shows that far too much news coverage is shaped by social media.
Social media is a quick and easy way to generate filler for the 24-hour news cycle. Too quick, too easy, and too bubbled.
Somehow all the high traditions of careful checking and multi-sourcing dissolve when a story bubbles through Journolist Twitter.
Especially, I suspect, when the story both confirms the biases of reporters and is funny. They can't wait to pass it on. They SHOULD wait.
But nobody wants to be the only outlet that isn't buzzing about the latest buzz on social media. It can be really hard to say "no."
In that way, buzz creates its own news; buzz becomes the story. A story about a story. A maze of mirrors the truth gets lost in.
