On ‘Radio Times’: Defining ‘lie’ when it comes to Trump

On Wednesday’s Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane, Marty was joined by Will Bunch, national columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, and Paul Farhi, media reporter for The Washington Post.

President Trump has proven that he has no problem calling the media ‘liars’ or ‘fake news.’ But the media that covers the President is struggling with the appropriateness of the term ‘lie,’ especially when it comes to Trump’s unfounded or baseless claims that are easily disproven.

On Wednesday’s Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane, Marty was joined by Will Bunch, national columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, and Paul Farhi, media reporter for The Washington Post. The panel discussed how journalism has changed in the age of Trump and in the age of Twitter. They eventually got to the issue of what makes a lie, and when the press should deploy that term.

Farhi posited that “a lie is when a person knows that something is untrue and they say it anyway. What do we know about Trump’s state of mind? We don’t know what he believes. And for all appearances, he may believe the extremely baseless wrong and exaggerated statements that he’s making. To call it out doesn’t necessarily require calling it a lie.”

Bunch disagreed with this analysis by saying “he has the ability to pick up the phone and get that information. Instead he’s saying something that is not true when he has the full capacity , in a way that you or I don’t have, to get the right information.” Bunch and used Trump’s claim that 3 million fraudulent votes were cast as an example of a lie.

Listen to the exchange in the tweet below:

From today’s show: @Will_Bunch and @farhip discuss if Trump’s inaccurate statements are lies: pic.twitter.com/uKyQi0X4tt

— Radio Times (@whyyradiotimes) June 28, 2017