FAKE NEWS: WHY THE MEDIA LOST THE BRANDING WAR.

ICHEOKU says the media in America has so far been unable to shake off the moniker   Fake News, which President Donald John Trump gave it and it is not without a reason. The media, instead of just reporting the news and giving out information as it is, and allow the people to decide what they want to do with it or make of it, have become so opinionated. They are agenda driven, they propagandize the people, they insert themselves in the news and sometimes even become the news itself, forcing their jaundiced viewpoint on the people and expects consumers to swallow it as news line, hook and sinker. 

Often times, this their opinion end up being wrong, false or later disproved as incorrect.  But instead of a retraction, apologizing or offering an explanation for why they got the story wrong, they usually double down, insisting that their version of the story is the truth and that the real truth is false or that their "sources" were forced to make a retraction just to make them look bad. This leaves many people wondering what exactly has become  the new objective of the media, which no longer correctly reports stories as they happened, being traditionally a purveyor of news and information; and insists that the consumers gulp down whatever they feed them without question. Why would the consumer not get the whole story, but only gets the subjective story which the media wants them to get.

The media has become so invested in pushing their own opinion that they now dabble into the stories, thriving in disputations and confrontations. Instead of trying to ferret out useful information on the way forward, they always dwell in the past insisting that somebody was once wrong, without finding out what has happened since the last time the person was wrong. Take the current coronavirus crisis for example, the media is always pointing to the previous statements made by the president at the beginning of the crisis, without providing the context of what information was available to the president then when he initially took a position. Whether they expect the president to be a prophet or magician or Nostradamus who sees tomorrow, nobody knows; otherwise how did the media expect the president to get everything right about the coronavirus from the onset. 

But they do not seem to care as they have an agenda which drives their narrative and regardless of all the president's best effort since the first time he opined on the coronavirus, they usually return to the misdeeds at the onset. This behavior is not a purveyor of news as they should be, but a recidivist activist media eager to score cheap points and make the president look bad and incompetent, period. The people are not interested about what was initially got wrong due to the then available information; they are only interested in what is going on presently and plans for the future on how to fix what is a national emergency of immerse proportion. This inability of American media to rise above the fray and report just the news, the present developments, fairly and objectively, is what has made the moniker fake news to stick to them. 

A matter which becomes so laughably pathetic when the person at the receiving end of their distortions is frequently proved to be right and innocent of their smear and propaganda. The American media also frequently reports stories which were unverified and unverifiable, and when later debunked, instead of an apology and retraction, they will simply move on to the next story as if it was not a big deal that they got the story wrong or that somebody suffered damage as a result. It is happening with such frequency that they all cannot be mere accidents or sources which later proved unreliable. Their purpose seems to be clear, a well orchestrated effort to smear, damage, disparage and cause disaffection within the society.

If not on purpose and purely accidental, they will admit to their mistake or that there was an error of judgement in their reporting and apologize for it, or simply retract and correct the falsehood. But they do not, instead they will ignore it or try to be stubbornly defensive about it or simply move on to the next false story. The circle of false stories continues with such frequency that it feels like they purposely make them up as they go and with one objective in mind, just to propagate a predetermined narrative. This failure of mea culpa and their obstinate refusal to admit their mistake, especially where glaringly clear, is what made the moniker FAKE NEWS to stick. They may not like it and wished that it went away, but until they fundamentally changes their manner of reportage, the public will never get back to filly believing everything the media says and at best, will always take it with a grain of salt. 

It is undeniable that the media usually has a dog in the fight in their effort to control any story. They want to always control the story. They want to be the only one informing the public on what is going on and according to their viewpoint, such that when the story does not fit their narrative, they readily tweaks it and sometimes even report another falsehood just to be in charge of information which the people are getting. But this making up of stories and reporting what is not true is simply going too far, as those who expected to be informed on the currency of events by the media, end up being fed rubbish and none existent falsehoods. It is regrettable and it is unfortunate what has become the fate of the media in America, as people no longer trust and believe what they publish as true and correct information, but mere propaganda meant to further a predetermined viewpoint narrative.

If as is widely understood before now that the purpose of the media is to inform and disseminate information, as a correlative, it necessarily follows that they should also issue corrections and retractions when they get things wrong or subsequent developments  ,Ade them being wrong or false. If they fail to do this, it becomes a journalistic malpractice and it continues, it becomes agenda driven and no longer a news outlet since they have abdicated from their primary duty to inform the public. 

The failure to correct such proven false and incorrect story or news, make the media  to be driven by other motive short of dissemination of information. So many media houses in America are guilty of this and it shows in their favorability rating and many people have also since tuned off. Nobody is expecting the media to be always 100% correct all the time, but that they should make effort to get their stories right most of the time and to, when mistakes are made, humbly acknowledge them, apologize and retract the bad story. That way, the public will understand that they are doing their best to inform them correctly and that they have no particular bias on which information they chose to convey, but are only interested in keeping the people informed of developments. 


Reporting unverified and unverifiable falsehoods is what makes the public question the truth of what they hear, read and watch in the media. Why the media have chosen this path to perdition is beyond ICHEOKU's comprehension as the media has been severally caught pants down with false stories. The worse part is their willful indifference to  these falsehood and the damage it is causing to their victims, both the disparaged and the consuming public who end up being misinformed. Of times, when they want to report these fake news, they will claim that anonymous sources told them that such and such happened, and when it pans out not to be true, they will blame it on the so called unnamed sources. 

Reporting fake news has eroded the media credibility so much that so many people no longer believe what they hear or watch in the media. People know and were tired of it but unfortunately seemed to have resigned to their fate of never going to get the media back to what they used to be and without any recourse until President Donald John Trump came around to call them out. The president bravely, boldly and courageously took them on and it has been game on to hold them accountable ever since. Today, this holding of the media accountable has taken on a global dimension as the term FAKE NEWS is now widely used throughout the world to designate an unverifiable and unverified news. But will the media ever recover from the damage to their credibility and believability, nobody knows.  

For example, no media house has ever confronted Hillary Clinton to explain why she has not accepted the result of the 2016 presidential election or asked her that she once complained that then candidate Donald John Trump was threatening our democracy by saying that he will not accept the election result under certain circumstances, what changed? A functioning, unbiased media would have since taken her to task about her apparent hypocrisy, but they all have agendas and unfortunately, it does not include asking Hillary Clinton tough questions. Even when the Democrats falsely claimed that the illegal immigration in the Southern border was a manufactured crisis, the media failed to confront them for some explanation when the invasion became widely obvious. Then add Russian Collusion, Ukrainian impeachment hoax as well as the General Michael Flynn's frame up by James Comey's FBI. It is no longer a quest to ferret out the truth.

Also. no journalist ever played to Democratic Party leaders their reactions during the Bill Clinton's impeachment and asked them to explain why their positions then are not also applicable to the impeachment of President Donald John Trump. It is also surprising that no media ever insisted that what was captured on video of Joe Biden, Charles Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and Jerry Nadal saying then, should remain the same high bar for invoking articles of impeachment during the Trump's impeachment hoax. Except for the terrific Mika Brzezinski's intervention, none of the Democratic Party leaders have yet insisted that women should be believed in the unfolding Joe Biden's Tara Reade's scandal as they all had parroted during the Justice Brett Kavanuagh's blackmail by Dr Christine Blasey Ford.

The American media agenda driven narrative also reared its biased head when Kanye West wore a MAGA hat to the White House. They all went crazy calling him insane and out of his mind and being Uncle Tom for supporting President Donald John Trump. But the same media did not call Kanye crazy when he berated George W. Bush for hating black people during his slow response to Hurricane Katrina victims. Rather, the media reported him as a heroic crusader who was putting the plight of black Americans upfront and center stage of America forum. Also the same Kanye West wasn't insane and crazy when he snatched Taylor Swift's microphone, but he suddenly became an inmate of a lunatic asylum simply because a MAGA hat had messed up with his brain. 

The FAKE NEWS badge of dishonor has now indelibly stuck to the media. It will be very difficult if not impossible to shake it off. It is pitiful and it is sad that the entire media outlet in America conspired to bring this unintended consequences upon themselves by endlessly reporting negatively of the Trump administration. They will not give him credit for anything, including which he did a clear right as the Commander in Chief of the United States armed forces with the taking out ISIS leader Abu Bakr Baghdadi. How does the media think that over 63 million MAGA members who support the president feel, seeing them report only negatively about our beloved president or does it mean that the president has never done anything to earn him a good mention in the media and it is system wide the media. 

If not for bundling of channels, millions of people would have since done away with CNN and MSNBC in particular from their television package. Anyway, when next they complain or have the audacity to say that they are not FAKE NEWS, let them say how many good press they have ever given the president since he won the last election as any objective media would have repeatedly done. Are they saying that the president has never done anything right or they just want to report only the bad stuff. Also why do they get so many stories wrong and why the frequent use of unnamed sources which often turn out to be wrong. It is also instructive that CNN's Jim Acosta forced the cancellation of the White House media briefing; but instead of pointing out his rudeness which led to it, the media  are busy complaining that the president no longer allows the White House Press briefings to hold. It is just sad and the media are shamelessly pitiful but like a tortoise and its shell, fake news has become the shell of the media in America.