For all of the fact-checking cable news chyrons and sassy correction tweets from journalists these days, the Fourth Estate is remarkably quiet in allowing the Nigerian army to baselessly blame President Trump for their decision to kill dozens of protesters.
Journalists — not even the usual minority of resistance reporters, but the normally responsible ones as well — have repeatedly shared the story that the Nigerian army is justifying shooting Shia protesters who threw rocks by citing Trump’s comments that military at the U.S.-Mexico border would shoot in response to having rocks thrown at them.
There’s just one catch: The Nigerian army shot the protesters on Monday. Trump’s comments came Thursday.
You would have no idea the Nigerian army deceived everyone if you just read straight news reports.
The New York Times described the Nigerian army’s claim uncritically, opening their news article with “The Nigerian Army, part of a military criticized for rampant human rights abuses, on Friday used the words of President Trump to justify its fatal shootings of rock-throwing protesters.” They note that the shooting occurred on Monday, but nowhere do they note that Trump’s comment came after the incident. In reading the rest of the piece, it remains unclear that the Nigerian army applied Trump’s comments retroactively.
Agence France-Presse, one of the largest international news organizations in the world, shared a Daily Mail article that also failed to mention that the Nigerian army lied in its justification that Trump effectively gave them permission to shoot the protesters.
The New York Post literally titled its news piece, “Nigerian army cites Trump speech before killing dozens of protesters.” The BBC also refused to correct itself to note that the army’s claim was retroactive. At the very least, Business Insider summarized the timeline of events at the top of their story.
It’s not worth linking to the dozens of news chiefs and reporters who uncritically retweeted and shared the Nigerian army’s justification as though Trump caused the shootings. Even if they read the piece, it’s fully possible that they came away thinking that the shooting came at the same time as the explanation today rather than three days before Trump’s comments.
The bigger issue at hand isn’t the media’s instinctive lurch to spread any story, true or not, that smears Trump. Rather, while they fairly fact-check Trump’s many lies, they refuse to do so for violent dictators and military juntas.
None of this is to excuse the tenor of Trump’s rhetoric. While rocks actually have injured border agents, the president must be mindful that his words matter. In this case, his words didn’t inspire the Nigerian army to kill protesters — but helping the army justify the killings in their diplomatic PR battle doesn’t help either.
Trump is wrong to attack journalists as enemies of the people. This country was founded on the notion that a free press is vital to hold power to account. But journalists can’t be so quick to resist Trump that they cease to check the real villains around the world and literally let them get away with murder.
