[Infowarrior] - AP's National Guard Story Is A Lesson About How News Works In The Trump Era

[Richard Forno]

AP's National Guard Story Is A Lesson About How News Works In The Trump Era

Is the White House playing the media? Are we playing ourselves? Just...take a breath.

By Jason Linkins

On Friday morning, The Associated Press reported that it had obtained an 11-page draft memo that suggested the Department of Homeland Security was contemplating a National Guard mobilization to round up unauthorized immigrants en masse across several states.

The White House almost immediately denied the authenticity of the memo. And with that, the press was back in a wilderness of confusion, asking, “How did this memo come to exist, then?”

I doubt the American political scene is full of 12-dimensional chess grandmasters, leaking memos and then denying them to make the press look bad. Most politicians are shallow and stupid! But the chaos surrounding the memo story shows the deep need for journalists to think carefully about how to approach big, breaking news in the age of President Donald Trump....

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ap-national-guard-trump-media_us_58a76c45e4b045cd34c1970c