Even before Hurricane Hanna slammed into Texas, the media blamed President Trump and his administration as unprepared, and then major media falsely reported that the storm toppled a border wall in Texas.
As mainstream media looks to find any area where they can work the narrative to make the Trump administration look unprepared, the newest battlefront for fake news is the weather.
As Hurricane Hanna approached Texas, many media outlets tried to tie Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic to the approaching tropical storm and angle for a way to further blame the president, alleging that Texas was about to be overwhelmed with the double whammy of death: That of a virus and that of mother nature’s wrath.
The media attempted to portray the administration as disorganized, and inferring that Trump had so poorly handled the coronavirus pandemic, then alleging that the administration was unequivocally doomed to fail at managing the approaching Category 1 storm.
However, as bad as it was, Texas likely dodged a bullet from Hurricane Hanna. So the media scrambled to find some negative story, any story, and courtesy of an unverified viral video, they ran with a fake one…
A number of major news outlets reported on Monday that Hurricane Hanna had toppled President Donald Trump’s “indestructible” border wall. The only problem was – it never happened.
And here, ladies and gentlemen, is Hurricane Hanna blowing down Trump’s impenetrable border wall. pic.twitter.com/12r8FnjKJK
— Alex Mohajer (@AlexMohajer) July 26, 2020
The reports were accompanied by a video that showed heavy winds knocking down a section of the border wall that was being built by the Trump administration. However, the Associated Press reported that that portion of the wall was not taken down as Hurricane Hanna passed over Texas this past weekend.
The video that circulated on social media over the weekend was that of a section of the wall being taken down in June in New Mexico before construction had been completed.
An official statement was sent out by a spokesperson for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
“U.S. Customs and Border Protection is not aware of any border wall panels falling over due to Hurricane Hanna hitting the Rio Grande Valley Sector this past weekend. The video circulating on social media appears to be from June 2020 when high winds caused several border wall panels that were pending additional anchoring to fall over at a construction site near Deming, New Mexico.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that is overseen the ongoing wall construction south of Deming, New Mexico, further confirmed that the video circulating was from June, saying: “The incident involving the unexpected high wind gust, which knocked over the barrier panels, occurred on June 5th.”
The media could have taken the time to check the facts before running with the story of the fake video. But they’d much prefer doing whatever it takes to get you to land on their page and hopefully click on an ad to get your online criminal justice degree MBA.
Journalism 101 teaches perspective reporters to verify before running with your stories and headlines. But those are the old rules from the days of print. In the days of social media and the Internet, the very act of monetary survival has forced the rules to change.
In the click economy, mainstream media outlets rush to get the lead on a story, getting as many clicks as possible (read: Money), then go back and make corrections in retractions later after the false headline has baited sufficiently to put a little cash in your pocket. Sadly, this is the way news works today and journalistic integrity is no longer the objective.
This fact is well documented and explained in the 2012 book by Ryan Holiday, “Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator.” Holiday explains how news media makes money in the Internet economy, why getting the story out first matters, and how issuing a retraction later gets the company out of legal hot water.
Not only that, Holiday explains that media outlets often leave the fake story in place, and add a retraction at the bottom of the article. That way they keep making money off the fake headline and story. Legally, they have their retraction at the bottom.
