US changes Fox News, fake news, and media bias its tune on migrants
US Vice-President Mike Pence says the US will honour a controversial refugee deal with Australia, under which America will resettle 1250 asylum seekers – a deal US President Donald Trump had described as ‘‘dumb’’.
Pence told a joint news with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in Sydney that the deal would be subject to vetting, and that honouring it ‘‘doesn’t mean that we admire the agreement’’.
‘‘We will honour this agreement out of respect to this enormously important alliance,’’ Pence said.
Under the deal, agreed with former president Barack Obama late last year, the US will resettle up to 1250 asylum seekers held in offshore processing camps in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. In return, Australia will resettle refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
The White House has already said it will apply ‘‘extreme vetting’’ to those asylum seekers held in the Australian processing centres seeking resettlement in the US.
The deal has taken on added importance for Australia, which is under political and legal pressure to shut the camps, particularly one on PNG’s Manus Island, where violence between residents and inmates has flared.
Australia’s relationship with the new administration in Washington got off to a rocky start when Trump lambasted Turnbull over the resettlement arrangement. Details of an acrimonious phone call between them soon after Trump took office made headlines around the world.
Pence was speaking on the final leg of a 10-day tour of the AsiaPacific region that had already taken him to South Korea, Japan and Indonesia.
His trip to Australia is the first by a senior official in the Trump administration as the US looks to strengthen economic ties and security cooperation amid disputes in the South China Sea and tension on the Korean peninsula.
Young immigrants brought to the US as children and now there conference illegally could ‘‘rest easy’’, Trump said yesterday, telling the ‘‘dreamers’’ they would not be targets for deportation under his immigration policies.
As a candidate, Trump strongly criticised Obama for ‘‘illegal executive amnesties’’, including actions to spare from deportation young people who were brought to the US as children and are now there illegally. But since the election, he has spoken more favourably about these immigrants, popularly dubbed ‘‘dreamers’’.
Yesterday he said that when it came to them, ‘‘this is a case of heart’’.
However, the US Department of Justice threatened yesterday to cut off funding to California as well as eight cities and counties, escalating a Trump administration crackdown on socalled ‘‘sanctuary cities’’ that do not cooperate with federal immigration authorities.
‘‘Sanctuary cities’’ in general offer a safe haven to illegal immigrants and often do not use municipal funds or resources to advance the enforcement of federal immigration laws. Those threatened with funding cuts include New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Miami Dade County in Florida.
Trump spoke ahead of his 100th day in office. He panned that marker as ‘‘artificial’’.
Still, the White House is eager to tout progress on the litany of agenda items he promised to fulfil in his first 100 days, despite setbacks including court bans on his proposed immigration limits and a high-profile failure in repealing and replacing the current healthcare law.
Trump said he spent his first 100 days laying the ‘‘foundation’’ for progress later in his administration, including by building relationships with foreign leaders.
Eager to start making progress on other campaign promises, Trump said he would unveil a tax overhaul package next week that would include a ‘‘massive’’ tax cut for both individuals and corporations. He would not provide details of rate proposals or how he planned to pay for the package, but claimed that the cuts would be ‘‘bigger, I believe, than any tax cut ever’’.
Fox News and its number one star Bill O’Reilly have parted ways following revelations of sexual harassment allegations and payouts against him. The media has been filled with the obvious stories. O’Reilly’s sometimes rocky tenure. Speculation on the upand-comers who might take his primetime spot.
One article stood out. An astute piece from Chris Cillizza of CNN explaining that O’Reilly had created Donald Trump. Cillizza described how in the 1990s, O’Reilly led the way recasting conservatism as populist, antiestablishment and non-PC. A phoenix, if you will, that eschewed the mainstream media, and rose from the fire (that it probably set) consuming the stuffy elitism of old conservatism.
This, and other developments in the news this week, reminded me that if the darlings of modern conservative media helped create Trump, the kingpins of fake news now sustain him.
At a White House event on Monday, President Trump needed a little shove from the First Lady before he remembered to put his hand on his heart during the national anthem.
His bungle was ridiculed (unfairly, I think) by detractors. But it was nothing compared to a 10-year-old boy who photo bombed CNN reporter Jim Acosta as he reported live from the lawn. As Acosta relayed a Q&A with Trump over North Korea, the boy popped out from behind him and appeared to yell "fake news!" into the camera.
CNN isn’t fake news. Certainly, it’s not perfect. But it’s a reputable media organisation with thousands of journalists in the US and around the world. I’ve sat in CNN green rooms and spoken in CNN studios. There’s no underlying conspiracy to hoodwink viewers or spread falsehoods.
So what struck me about the accosting of Acosta was not how precocious it was. But how dark it felt.
A few days later on air at Fox Business Network, my Republican counterpart expressed glee that the boy was a future member of the GOP. Maybe I’m kidding myself. But this isn’t – and can’t become – political.
Fake news outlets publish hoaxes, propaganda, and disinformation, while purporting to be legitimate news organisations. Take Infowars.com for example. Its founder, Alex Jones, has suggested that the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre didn’t happen. That the moon landing was US Government propaganda. That 9/11 was an inside job.
Jones made the "real" news this week. In the midst of a custody battle for his three children, Jones’ lawyer told a Texas court that Jones is a "performance artist" who plays a character. He was painted into this corner because Jones’ wife said he was unstable (reviewing YouTube footage of Jones taking his clothes off in protest of government surveillance, it’s easy to see why). Jones tried to thread the needle by saying he wasn’t trying to trick the public, but the damage was done. I expect some alt-right Infowars fans got a rude shock upon hearing this. The rest of us just shook our heads. Jones’ website reaches about 5 million people a month. His YouTube channel has 2 million subscribers. And his conspiracy theories have been elevated by the US president, who, like the ten year old on the White House lawn, slams CNN as "fake news". On the campaign trail, Trump parroted Jones, suggesting that President Obama founded Islamic State. Once in office, Trump echoed Jones’ "deep state" fears and repeated Jones’ claim that the mainstream media underreports terrorist attacks.
In a democracy where freedom of speech is guaranteed, I can’t make the case that Jones doesn’t get to have his say. But the poison he has spewed for years foments discord and mistrust. And this poison found a champion in Trump, a candidate who exploited the fears of and divisions among Americans on his way to the top job.
This is not to say that media is neutral. It incorporates and projects the inherent biases of the people that work within it. In England, compare The Times and The Guardian. In the U.S., compare O’Reilly’s Fox News with Cillizza’s CNN. I have experienced it first hand as a political commentator. At CNN, my views are in the mainstream. At Fox, I am the counter-point. The "loony liberal" as Sean Hannity likes to say (I consider it a badge of honour).
But media bias isn’t the problem. The problem is characterising real news as fake news while elevating conspiracies as legitimate reporting.
I hope someone sets that 10-year-old boy straight. And the US President.