News media finally calls out Trump on his lies. It took children in cages to make it happen.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/nation-now/2018/06/19/family-separations-border-news-media-trump-lying-column/713112002/

News media finally calls out Trump on his lies. It took children in cages to make it happen.
USA Today NetworkBill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic Published 8:46 a.m. ET June 19, 2018 | Updated 9:11 a.m. ET June 19, 2018


Maybe there is a tipping point.

It's certainly looking that way. Outrage over the Trump administration's policy of separating children from their parents at the border is clearly growing, and it looks as if the media are a driving force behind it. Social media, mainstream news media, you name it: Media outlets have finally gone all Howard Beale (no doubt because their audiences have). They're mad as hell, and they're not going to take it anymore.

It may have taken the sickening treatment of children to make that happen, but better late than never.

Let's hope.

Finally, we seem willing to call a lie a lie — sorry, a falsehood if you're the The New York Times — something that's been carefully avoided since President Donald Trump first began running for office. Finally, we seem willing to look beyond he said, she said false equivalencies, the anchor that's been dragging down meaningful reporting for far too long.

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And, of course, by Monday night, that one clarion signal of desperation rang: Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, treating the truth like a piñata and their Fox News shows like a stick, doled out blame everywhere but at the president's feet. (The president's favorite show, Fox & Friends, had earlier led the fake-blame charge. Ann Coulter, on a Fox News panel Sunday night, called the children seen crying in photos "child actors," but it's best not to dignify anything she says with reaction.)

What's next?

Again, though, the question: Will it matter? Won't the Fox News-watching, MAGA-hat-wearing crowd continue to look past the lies, the distortions, the blame game and continue to orbit around Planet Trump?

Probably.

So what? Let 'em. This gradual media awakening won't solve all of the problems with Trump. It may not even solve this one. It won't convert the non-believers who think of "media" as a five-letter word more obscene than all the four-letter ones they know.

But it's a start.