Journalist and former CBS news anchor Dan Rather admonished the Wall Street Journal’s top editor for pledging that the newspaper won’t use the word “lie” in reporting on President-elect Donald Trump’s potential dishonesty as president.
“A lie, is a lie, is a lie,” Rather wrote in a Facebook post Monday and called WSJ’s Editor-in-Chief Gerard Baker’s comments “deeply disturbing.”
Baker said during an interview on a Sunday news show that he wants the newspaper to “be careful about using the word lie” in describing potential Trump falsehoods because it “implies a deliberate intent to mislead.”
Baker said he wants readers, not reporters, to determine whether Trump is telling the truth or deliberately misleading Americans.
“It is not the proper role of journalists to meet lies, especially from someone of Mr. Trump’s stature and power, by hiding behind semantics and euphemisms,” Rather wrote.
“Our role is to call it as we see it, based on solid reporting. When something is, in fact, a demonstrable lie, it is our responsibility to say so,” Rather added.
Rather said he didn’t take any “joy” in taking issue with Baker, but he added, “We are being confronted by versions of what are claimed to be ‘the truth’ that resemble something spewed out by a fertilizer-spreader in a wind tunnel.”
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