I have generally agreed with the journalistic practice of not calling falsehoods “lies” on the grounds that you can rarely prove someone is saying something *intentionally* false. But I think it’s amply justified, and probably necessary, to say Trump is lying about this.
Trump cannot be confused about whether Stefan Halper was a member of his campaign. He has to know he has no basis for these incendiary claims about Halper being sent by “Democrats” to gather information for “political gain”.
There is no plausible reading on which these are somehow honest mistakes. He’s leveling extremely serious accusations that he has to know are either flatly false or, at best, supported by no evidence.
Precisely because the accusations are so serious and so reckless, at this point it seems irresponsible NOT to say: The president has decided to lie about this.
Replies to this remind me that it’s tempting to cope with this sort of insanity by retreating into savvy pose: “Ho hum, there he goes lying about the deep state conspiracy against him again; you’re not surprised are you?
Sure, Trump lies a ton, and the tendency is to get a little numb to it. But the president is fabricating a law enforcement conspiracy against him. He’s falsely accusing government employees of criminal conduct. That’s still a big deal. That’s still outrageous.
Also, look, at some point the press has to adapt to the fact that for all his cries of “fake news”, Trump understands and is exploiting the scrupulousness of mainstream reporting. He knows he can say the most insane things and the headline won’t be “Trump fabricates conspiracy”
He knows the Times and the Post will dutifully report outlandish & therefore newsworthy claims made by a president, and then at most add something like: “no evidence for these claims was provided.”
If, as I suspect, an average reader is going to come away from that story thinking “Democrats planted a mole on the Trump campaign for political advantage” is a serious, albeit unproven, claim—something with a 50/50 chance of being true—that badly misserves the reader.
At some point the only responsible frame for that story is to lead with: “The president levied a series of outlandish & fabricated charges of criminal misconduct against agencies investigating him” before you repeat the substance of the conspiracy theory.
If your headline is “Official alleges that Jews drink the blood of gentile babies” & the strongest caveat you can put on it is a “the claim could not be verified” in paragraph three, that’s irresponsible. You’re culpable as a reporter for the harm that does.
Yeah, the first obligation is to report facts, and statements like that by public officials are newsworthy. But if it’s a mortal journalistic sin to report falsehood as fact, it’s at least a venial one to be so “neutral” you leave the impression that nonsense is plausible.
