Keith Olbermann tends to get a bit extreme for me. But since I was about to write pretty much this exact thing this morning, I’ll just encourage you to listen to him and add a few thoughts. To sum up: Kellyanne Conway, Sean Spicer and Reince Prebus (among others) have been regularly stepping in front of microphones and interviewers and outright LYING to the American people. These aren’t just lies of omission or twisting the perspective — these include numerous outright lies. With a free press, there is simply no reason for the 4th Estate to give them air time. Stop interviewing them, and stop covering the Press Briefings live.
 
Our current President has also flat out lied to us many-times-over. While it would be wrong not to cover him (he is, in fact, newsworthy by definition), I very much agree with Olbermann’s argument here:
  • don’t cover him live
  • have fact checkers on hand (as the press ALWAYS should, in EVERY interview) to confirm truths, untruths, and half truths
  • challenge these, live and on the air. If he is being interviewed, this should be done in real time. If you don’t know how to do that, hire Jon Stewart and his Daily Show people — they are quite good at it. It’s called preparation, try it sometime! And if it is on tape, stop the tape, insert the facts, and start the tape again.
  • show the rants, and call them rants.
Do the research on the facts and pass it along to the public. And call those in power who are trying to make their personal alt-facts are the new norm. And if you can’t find a way to do that, maybe the people making those decisions for the “press” need to go away and find someone who wants to actually do the job.

Our country needs to have policy discussions that are based on FACTS, not alt-facts or opinions on what the facts might be. Not that long ago, our politicians were able to agree on the facts, and then apply their different political perspectives in an attempt to find the right answer. That’s what politics and political parties are for.

As Daniel Patrick Moynihan once told us: “everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Everyone is not entitled to their own facts.”
 
P.S. To be fair, some in the press are getting much better recently at asking tougher questions and pushing interviewees when they lie or change the subject .. but it’s still way too rare to hear someone called out on it.