The embrace of fake news by the so-called elite media is growing ever more brazen. Last June, we reached what seemed like a tipping point when CNN retracted an entire story about a Trump adviser allegedly under investigation for ties to Russia when it turned out to be bogus.
That we did not hit rock bottom is evident from the more recent reaction of another media outlet, Time magazine, to getting caught with its pants down. The story, which J.E. Dyer reported on on Thursday, was teased by a cover photo of a crying migrant child appearing to gaze up at an indifferent Donald Trump. As J.E. notes, the toddler in the picture was never separated from her mother, as Time claimed. “In fact, the mother had set out with the child on her own, some three weeks ago, and the father, 32-year-old Denis Javier Varela Hernandez, hadn’t known where they were until he saw them on the news in Texas.”
A number of blogs have reported the same factual error, based on a Daily Mail interview with the father. So what does Time have to say for itself? Via The Federalist’s Rachel Stoltzfoos:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
TIME magazine is standing by a cover photo and story critical of Trump’s immigration policies that reporters exposed Friday as factually incorrect, wildly misleading, and lacking important context.
Shorter Time: Never let a piece of propaganda that sells magazines go to waste.
Although the cover will remain unchanged, the story now carries a “correction” that reads:
The original version of this story misstated what happened to the girl in the photo after she taken [sic] from the scene. The girl was not carried away screaming by U.S. Border Patrol agents; her mother picked her up and the two were taken away together.
As Stoltzfoos notes:
The combination of erroneous reporting, missing context and lack of due diligence in the reporting process from TIME here are stunning. What was supposed to be a story highlighting the plight of families who are torn apart as they flee violence turned out instead to highlight exactly the kind of case that conservatives say makes the situation at the border complex. Some families are falsely claiming asylum to game the system, knowingly putting their children in danger, and drug traffickers and smugglers are taking advantage of the situation. It’s not as simple as the media class has made it out to be.
