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#ThingsITrustMoreThanFoxNews is Trending & Here’s Why

by Korey Lane

It's no secret that the current commander in chief has somewhat of a love affair with Fox News. Indeed, President Donald Trump has long hailed the merits of the conservative-leaning news channel and opposed the likes of CNN, ABC, and NBC. And now, following another one of Trump's early-morning tweet storms, people are tweeting #ThingsITrustMoreThanFoxNews (again), because freedom of the press is still a very important concept.

On Saturday morning, the president took to Twitter to express his disgust at CNN for making a "vicious and purposeful mistake," during their broadcast Friday. But, as Trump's love for Fox News is well known, many on Twitter decided to let it be known that no matter what, they won't trust Trump's favorite network. Because even though CNN did make a mistake in their reporting, it was somewhat small, and the network issued a statement recognizing their slip-up.

The mistake CNN made was in regards to part of the scandal surrounding Trump's oldest son. According to The Washington Post, CNN reported that "Donald Trump Jr. received an email on Sept. 4, 2016, that granted special access to WikiLeaks documents." However, as The Washington Post noted, that email was actually dated Sept. 14, 2016. And while it's a one-digit mistake, it still matters. But, it doesn't matter as much as Trump would have you believe, something the #ThingsITrustMoreThanFoxNews hashtag is trying to make known.

It's a fairly well-known fact that Fox News has provided mostly positive coverage of the Trump administration, while other networks remain critical and more centered in their views. In fact, as The New York Times reported last month, Fox News was actually reporting on the Clinton investigation while Trump's "campaign associates Paul Manafort and Rick Gates were indicted as part of the investigation by the special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian meddling in the 2016 election."

While other networks were focusing on the investigation of the present, Fox News was busy airing a pre-recorded interview of Kellyanne Conway calling for the Clinton campaign to be investigated. So, yeah. It makes sense that people would be a little skeptical of Fox News and their reporting.

But, this isn't the first time the hashtag has been trending on Twitter. Back in October, it was Fox News' turn to make a mistake, which then caused Twitter users to jump aboard the #ThingsITrustMoreThanFoxNews train. According to Variety, the network,

issued a correction to its Oct. 8 segment featuring a veteran named John Garofalo. In the statement, the network said that "all" of Garofalo’s claims "turned out to be untrue."

After their original segment, it was revealed that Garofalo wasn't a Navy Seal, as he had claimed to be, and didn't serve in Vietnam. After that bombshell, the hashtag really took off, and now it's back.

So, after CNN's recent correction, it makes sense that Trump would criticize them. At a rally in Pensacola, Fla. Friday, Trump exclaimed, "CNN apologized just a little while ago," according to The Washington Post. "They apologized. Oh, thank you, CNN. Thank you so much. You should’ve been apologizing for the last two year."

While Trump didn't explicitly mention Fox News in his tweets Saturday morning, the hashtag still started trending, nevertheless. Likely due to Trump's past infatuation with the network, Twitter users decided to remind the world that just because CNN made a mistake doesn't mean Fox News is any more reliable of a source.

The fact is, reporters make mistakes. And while CNN's mess up certainly matters, with The Washington Post reporting that, "CNN’s report indicated that the Trump campaign had been fed hacked email files belonging to the Democratic National Committee and former secretary of state Colin Powell more than a week before the files were released publicly," it doesn't mean that the entire network is purposefully lying.

A free press is a key part of a functioning democracy, and news networks (and newspapers) cannot be threatened by the president or anyone else in power to report what they want to be reported about them. End of story.