The Callum Borchers of the world want "fake news" to mean only one thing: Crazy, sensationalist web sites with no journalistic credentials publish headlines like, "Obama born in Kenya, pledge loyalty to mosque there."
But fake news doesn't always take that form. Sometimes fake news is 50 percent true, or even 90 percent true. But it's the part they leave out, or fudge, or alter ever so slightly that not only makes it fake, but makes it so pernicious that someone reported it as fact.
So: Did you hear that President Trump made fun of a U.S. senator for having Native American heritage? How awful! He derisively referred to her as "Pocahontas"! What a racist!
That sounds pretty bad, until you recognize the very important element of the story that the media - in this case, NBC News - completely ignored. Here's how they reported it:
President Donald Trump returned to one of his most derogatory insults Friday, referring to Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren as "Pocahontas" — a jab at her Native American ancestry.
Speaking to a cheering crowd of NRA members in Atlanta, Trump said "it may be Pocahontas" who seeks the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. "And she is not big on the NRA," Trump added, an apparent reference to Warren's support of gun-control measures.
Now, is what they wrote true? Er, I'd say it's 85 percent true. But the part that's not true is crucial: Warren's claim that she has Native American heritage is a lie, and is widely recognized as such. When Trump and others refer to her a Pocahontas (or the even funnier "Fauxcahontas"), the dig refers to the fact that she pretended to be an Indian but clearly isn't one.
Elizabeth Warren is not a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.
Elizabeth Warren is not enrolled in the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians.
And Elizabeth Warren is not one of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee.
Nor could she become one, even if she wanted to.
Despite a nearly three week flap over her claim of "being Native American," the progressive consumer advocate has been unable to point to evidence of Native heritage except for a unsubstantiated thirdhand report that she might be 1/32 Cherokee. Even if it could be proven, it wouldn't qualify her to be a member of a tribe: Contrary to assertions in outlets from The New York Times to Mother Jones that having 1/32 Cherokee ancestry is "sufficient for tribal citizenship," "Indian enough" for "the Cherokee Nation," and "not a deal-breaker," Warren would not be eligible to become a member of any of the three federally recognized Cherokee tribes based on the evidence so far surfaced by independent genealogists about her ancestry.
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So NBC News kinda sorta mostly told you the truth. But in reality, they were telling you a lie. They want you to believe that Warren is a Native American and Trump made a racist comment about that. They don't want you to know that Warren pretended to be a Native American, and that Trump's dig at her was about the pretending.
Now, is it possible that NBC really didn't know about the complete incredibility of Warren's claims? Not at all, because if you click the link you'll see that later on in the story they discuss in some detail the fact that Warren has been accused of faking the claim.
But there too, NBC is giving you fake news. They present the controversy as merely an invention of conservative critics, offering no details one way or the other to demonstrate whether the accusation against Warren is true or false. But clearly from the lead of its story, NBC demonstrates that it intends to give Warren the benefit of the doubt, while assuming the worst about Trump's remark and the motives behind it. Had they googled the matter and spent five minutes looking into it, NBC would have discovered there is ample reason to to believe Warren's claims about being Native American are false.
But that assumes they didn't already know that. I don't that that's what was going on here. I think NBC knows full well that Warren's claims were false, but they figure most of their readers don't know that, so they can convincingly present the controversy as a mere invention of mean conservatives and thus sell the idea that Trump is some sort of racist meanie for calling Warren Pocahontas.
They may not have reported that Trump met with aliens and a secretly-still-alive Hitler. But what they did try to sell you is just as false. Donald Trump did not make a racist comment about Elizabeth Warren. But it's a more pernicious type of fake news because there's just enough in it that's true that you might believe the whole thing.
