The president’s “fake news” gambit is malarkey, overall. But CNN and ABC and others are doing their best to make it seem non-malarkey-ish to a lot of people.
When Donald Trump says you can’t trust what the “fake news” reports about Russia, or Roy Moore, or …anything, he has an accomplice working hard to help make his case: The media.

Consider the last week or so. Donald Trump is calling on The Washington Post to fire reporter Dave Weigel for a “phony photo” about the size of a Trump rally in Florida on Friday. Weigel conceded that “It was a bad tweet on my personal account, not a story for Washington Post. I deleted it after like 20 minutes. Very fair to call me out.” But journalists rightly treat Trump’s tweets as official statements.

But this was petty compared to other recent media mistakes. On the heels of ABC News’ chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross’s botched ABC News story, CNN was forced to correct an erroneous bombshell report about Wikileaks documents being provided to the Trump campaign. (Note: I am a CNN political commentator.)