New York (CNN Business)On Saturday night former President Donald Trump declared that he was the victim of a scandal "far greater" than Watergate. He called for criminal prosecutions and "reparations." He said "in a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death."
Trump's statement made no sense -- except to the Fox audience base that badly wants it to be true.
Four days later, Trump-aligned media outlets are still amplifying his bogus message far and wide and ranting about the circumstances of his 2016 election win over Hillary Clinton. Tuesday's cover of the New York Post portrayed "HILLARY THE SPY." The Wall Street Journal editorial page said "Trump really was spied on." Fox hosts have called it a "bombshell" dozens of times.
The actual court filing at issue is much less newsworthy than the explosion of false claims that have ricocheted from it. Reporters who went down the rabbit hole to examine the evidence found something very different from what Trump and his media allies said. That should have been the end of it — but instead the careful reporting became fodder for commentators to allege a media cover-up. That's why it is worth examining this as a media phenomenon and an example of how talking points are spread by a massive media apparatus and shared by millions of consumers.
The talking points all stem from this: On Friday night, as CNN's Katelyn Polantz and Evan Perez explained in a Monday article, special counsel John...
Pakistani actress and model Ayesha Omar has strongly denied a controversial statement falsely attributed to her on social media. In recent days, a statement circulated online claiming that the act...