Fake news isn't fake, it's manipulative

We’ve heard over and over again from our new president that the liberal media is atrocious and that fake news runs rampant. Like many educated Americans, I was skeptical of these claims, hesitant to believe much of anything that President Trump says. Over this past weekend, I drove down to Washington D.C. with the Muhlenberg College Republicans for the Conservative Political Action Conference, better known as CPAC. While we were at the conference on Friday, Feb. 24, we had the opportunity to see President Trump speak in the morning. As he walked up to the podium, I suddenly found in my hands a bundle of flags with Trump’s name on them, so I took one and passed them to my friend sitting next to me. As he began, the energy in the room was electric; I watched him intently, hoping to hear something different from his vague campaign promises. Trump made a striking comment—something about the bias of the media, how we would never hear a conservative perspective in the mainstream—and at that point, we all raised the Trump flags, waving in support of his statement. Just as quickly as we received the flags, they were being pulled from our hands and collected.

While Trump was still speaking, a tweet from Peter Hamby, Head of News at Snapchat, surfaced saying, “Crowd at CPAC waving these little pro-Trump flags look exactly like the Russian flag. Staffers quickly come around to confiscate them,” paired with pictures of my fellow College Republicans. As it turns out, a man named Ryan Clayton from the well-known, liberal news website The Huffington Post, had purposefully planted these flags in the crowd at CPAC to manufacture a false report of the event. He was dressed like a CPAC volunteer to deceive audience members into taking the flags. CPAC staffers had realized that these flags looked exactly like the Russian flag, an obvious dig at Trump’s relationship with Putin. Clayton admitted to the falsity of his report, asserting that it was his way of protesting Trump’s presidency.

While Trump is divisive among Americans, I can’t help but feel like this is something we should all agree upon: fake news isn’t fake; Trump wasn’t exaggerating when he said that the liberal media are manipulative. I consider myself an educated young woman and having experienced such a dishonest demonstration from the media, and especially as a media and communication major here at Muhlenberg, I am disgusted and disappointed. Talk about despicable. I’m sure like many other CPAC attendees, I wasn’t paying attention to the paraphernalia being passed around, but rather, the headlining speaker of the day. In a moment of great anticipation and excitement, no one thought to question the flags. From where I was sitting, I felt used and betrayed by an industry that I have been studying since freshmen year. I want students on campus to be wary of all media sources, as the truth is not their priority.

For more, read The Atlantic’s article: A Actual False-Flag Operation at CPAC.