News Reporter: Fact Checker: Fact-checking President Trump’s Fake News Awards

Friday, 19 January 2018

Fact Checker: Fact-checking President Trump’s Fake News Awards

Democracy Dies in Darkness

The truth behind the rhetoric

Fact-checking President Trump's 'Fake News Awards'

The "Fake News Awards" announced on the Republican National Committee website and touted by President Trump pose a conundrum: Does it really count if the news organization admits error? Regular readers of The Fact Checker know that we do not award Pinocchios if a politician admits error. Everyone makes mistakes — and the point is not to play gotcha. News organizations operate in a competitive arena and mistakes are bound to be made. The key test is whether an error is acknowledged and corrected.

At least seven of the 11 "Fake News" winners resulted in corrections. Of those, two reports prompted suspensions or resignations. Two of the "awards" were simply tweets that were quickly corrected. One was an opinion article in which the author later retracted his prediction. And the final award went to the Russia investigation, which is ongoing.

President Trump almost never admits error, even as he has made more than 2,000 false or misleading statements. Put another way: If the president admitted error as frequently, he would earn far fewer Pinocchios. So with that context, here's our run down of the awards.

Enjoy this newsletter? Forward it to someone else who'd like it! If this e-mail was forwarded to you, sign up here for the weekly newsletter. Hear something fact-checkable? Send it here, we'll check it out.

No, the military would not 'shut down' during a government shutdown

As the clock to keep the government open winds down, President Trump warned that the military would be the hardest hit by the looming shutdown. He tweeted that, "a government shutdown will be devastating to our military" and then told reporters a shutdown would interfere with his efforts to "bring [the military] to a level that it's never been at." It's hard to nail down exactly what the president is warning about, but would the military really go AWOL during a shutdown?

When the government runs out of money to fund itself, it goes into shutdown mode — offices close, droves of workers get furloughed and many services go offline. A federal statute generally bars agencies from spending money that Congress and the president have not appropriated. But the law has big exceptions, notably for national security.

The Defense Department's most recent contingency plan for a shutdown says all active-duty military personnel would stay on the job, as well as 22 percent of its civilian employees. Moreover, the president has broad authority to decide who stays on the job and can bring back other civilian workers.

Trump also claimed that a shutdown would set back efforts to upgrade the military's resources and increase defense spending. But those efforts are bipartisan and will likely survive a shutdown.

For sounding misleading alarm bells, the president earns Three Pinocchios.

We're always looking for fact-check suggestions.

You can also reach us via email, Twitter (@GlennKesslerWP, @mmkelly22, @rizzoTK or use #FactCheckThis), or Facebook (Fact Checker). Read about our rating scale here, and sign up here for our weekly Fact Checker newsletter.