A Potential Tale of Two Possiblities.

A lot of fake news can be detected by listening for two little words.

In days of yore, publishers and editors didn’t put stories on the air or into print until they had enough of the facts to support the storyline. Sometimes in the race to break a story ahead of the competition, they got a little ahead of themselves. When they did, they sometimes printed or aired material that was not accurate and had to be retracted or corrected. Since reputations are important to news organizations, they avoided making mistakes as much as possible.

Now, to stay ahead of other outlets, some news organizations go with material that hasn’t yet been fleshed out. Understanding a few code words can help consumers to recognize when a story might, possibly, potentially be fake news. For example, James Rosen of Fox News wrote a story on March 23^rd with the following provocative title.

Potential 'smoking gun' showing Obama administration spied on Trump team, source says.

Comrade Paul Manafort and the Kremlin Connection

First, Rachel Maddow recently revealed two pages of Trump’s 2006 tax returns which showed that Trump paid 38 million dollars in taxes that year. That was a whopping twenty-four percent! Trump followers were shocked. How could anyone who was supposed to be good at business be so bad at tax evasion? It’s hard to respect a business person who pays that much in taxes.

President Trump is standing his ground about wiretapping allegations. Oh, yeah! His tweets about the Obama team bugging Trump Tower continue to be a top news story. A recent Wall Street Journal editorial said, “… the President clings to his assertion like a drunk to an empty gin bottle.”  When will he let it go?