When faced with a candidate like Donald Trump — who lies as instinctively as he breathes — it’s natural to be confused about how, exactly, to handle the constant stream of misinformation emanating from his campaign. But as has become increasingly clear in recent months, many reporters simply aren’t doing their jobs when it comes to fact-checking Trump, and it’s adding up.
Samantha Bee on fact-checking Trump’s campaign: “Calling a liar a liar isn’t an opinion if you can prove it”
The Full Frontal host is sick of newsrooms not doing their jobs.
Caroline Framke wrote about culture, which usually means television. Also seen @ The A.V. Club, The Atlantic, Complex, Flavorwire, NPR, the fridge to get more seltzer.
So when Samantha Bee’s late-night show, Full Frontal, came back from hiatus, the host had some choice words for the media — especially Commander-in-Chief Forum moderator Matt Lauer — that keeps letting Trump’s lies skate by.
“At some point, networks decided they could just ask questions and the answers would be someone else’s problem,” Bee fumed, pointing to a CNN guest who punted questions about the Geneva Conventions back at the viewers, as if they, “in their plentiful spare time,” will spend their days combing through documents for the answers they want and expect from the news.
And though Bee has some sympathy for everyone who has to fact-check the “mendacious geyser of vomit that spews nonstop from the Trump campaign,” she took the time she had to point out that even if that’s hard, that’s kind of what newsrooms are supposed to do.
“Why can’t the media just tell us what’s true and what’s bullshit?” Bee asked in exasperation.
The show then cut to a clip of MSNBC’s Chris Matthews dissecting Lauer’s moderation performance, wherein Matthews said it’s “hard” to call someone a liar, because “it sounds like an opinion when you do that.”
Bee’s counterpoint: “Calling a liar a liar isn’t an opinion if you can prove it. That’s what we call a fact.”
Watch the full segment above.
