CNN rolled out a pretty bold way to fact-check Donald Trump
How do you deal with a candidate that constantly contradicts himself?
The answer for the media is usually just to say so. And yet, for Donald Trump, that just hasn't been enough.
So CNN took it to another level on Thursday. During coverage of Trump's discussion of giving nuclear weapons to Japan, the network just straight up put his flip-flop on the screen.
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Plenty of politicians change their positions, and many of them tend to try to hide their inconsistencies. Few even approach The Donald.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee has been roundly criticized for his tendency to change positions and then deny doing so. PolitiFact awarded his campaign misstatements as the 2015 "Lie of the Year." Politico fact-checked Trump for one week and found "more than five dozen statements deemed mischaracterizations, exaggerations, or simply false."
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This has posed a particular challenge for the media that many feel has not been met. Numerous critiques have blamed the media for giving Trump too much coverage while also not doing enough to point out his inconsistencies or outright lies.
CNN has been the subject of plenty of criticism, so the channel had to enjoy the widespread approval of its lower third (also known as a chyron).
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Fact-checking Trump isn't easy. As his popularity has grown, The Donald has become even more brazen in his appearances. In March, he contradicted himself in separate interviews just minutes apart. In another appearance, Trump said he was not advocating for guns in classrooms then seemed to say he thought it was OK sometimes.
Most recently, Trump has been claiming that he opposed the Iraq War, a notion that has gone unchallenged by some in the media.
It will be worth watching to see if CNN continues this kind of practice, and whether other media companies adopt similar tactics.
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Topics Donald Trump Elections
Jason Abbruzzese is a Business Reporter at Mashable. He covers the media and telecom industries with a particular focus on how the Internet is changing these markets and impacting consumers. Prior to working at Mashable, Jason served as Markets Reporter and Web Producer at the Financial Times. Jason holds a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University and an M.A. in International Affairs from Australian National University.
