I got an adult dose of real fake news the other night on a local television station.
It came via a fellow called Boris Epshteyn. He is a Republican political operative and lawyer who, until March, was a White House employee coordinating surrogate cable news spokesmen for President Trump.
Now he's "chief political analyst" for Maryland-based Sinclair Broadcasting Group, the largest chain of local television stations in the country. That means the Russian-born Boris is the designated Donald Trump propagandist for a national pro-Trump broadcasting syndicate.
I do not overstate. Sinclair made a deal last year with the Trump campaign to broadcast exclusive interviews with him--free advertising--in exchange for special access.
Do you remember when the Montana Republican congressional candidate body-slammed a reporter a few months ago for committing real journalism by asking him a question he didn't want? A Montana NBC affiliate owned by Sinclair initially refused to cover the incident. One of Sinclair's top executives sent a contribution to that assailant, according to Politico.
On the night of my happenstance viewing, Epshteyn provided a segment on KATV, Channel 7, in Little Rock, a Sinclair property, that extolled the Trump administration's elimination of scores of federal regulations.
It was fake news because it was unilaterally Trump-promotional. Unilateral promotion is not news. It's advertising.
It is true that the Trump administration has purged scores of Obama-era regulations, many of them in environmental protection. But real reporting would do more than present an unabashed Trump advocate in a disguised-as-a-reporter role interviewing approvingly a Trump administration official about the compelling wonderment of this liberating purge of burdensome regulation.
Real news would report that knowledgeable people find some of the regulation removals to be ill-advised, even dangerous. Real news would present one or more of those knowledgeable people expressing countering views on a couple of the regulations they found most egregious.
Here is what real top-drawer journalism would do: It would investigate these abandoned regulations to study what effect, if any, was being felt on, say, the environment, and, if finding evidence or credible allegation of harm, report as much independently and by self-initiative.
That's what real journalism is--independent self-initiated reporting that the government doesn't dictate or remotely want and that the president, whether Trump or Bush or Clinton, doesn't expect or like.
Real top-drawer journalism is obligated only to readers and viewers. It reveals new information to invite contemplation and debate. It is the public's best check on its democratic republic, no matter who sits atop it.
The real threats to the democratic republic are voters who refuse to engage in, or are incapable of, responsible receipt of this information. Maybe they, like the preposterous second-place president, don't want light cast on their partisan-preferred darkness.
Whenever real reporting unfavorable to him gets performed by the great American news organizations--the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, mainly--our megalomaniacally and narcissistically thin-skinned president turns alarmingly demagogic.
He rants to the admiring masses at his rallies about "fake news." He says the media don't love America because they don't report what he wants, as if he were America.
Through it all, the only "fake news" I've seen lately remains the Trump propaganda on the local television station.
That affront to journalism was not the fault of the local television station. Its people can't help that their station is a property of Sinclair, owner of 173 local television stations with 42 more contained in a recent pending purchase.
Sinclair has ordered its hostage affiliates to put Boris' segments on the air--segments like the one quoting Kellyanne Conway as saying farmers and truck drivers love what Trump is doing.
Maybe they do, but, as the media critic for the Baltimore Sun wrote, why not ask a farmer or truck driver rather than a White House spokesman with whom you very recently worked?
Sinclair is turning a portion of its local television newscasts into what ought to be titled "The Greatness of Donald Trump--A Thinly Disguised Autobiography."
It's as if this newspaper published my opinion column on the front page and didn't counter it with splendid conservative editorials and worthy conservative essays from Voices page colleagues.
I can hear right-wingers now: What's the difference between Sinclair's hiring Epshteyn and ABC's hiring George Stephanopoulos, formerly of Bill Clinton's presidential staff?
At least Stephanopoulos' job is to anchor a news show, conduct interviews of newsmakers and moderate panel discussions, not to tell you how wonderful Clinton is.
As an independent local journalist whose job is to comment on the news and express opinion, I bear a responsibility to advise you: When you're sitting in your easy chair awaiting the Modern Family rerun on Channel 7 at 10:30 p.m., and when a guy named Boris pops up to blow kisses to Trump, what you are seeing ... that's the real fake news.
------------v------------
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 08/31/2017