This may be small fry perhaps, but please bear with me. I think it shows just how fishy the media, including the BBC, can be.
(And even if you loathe Trump and all his works, I still think you'll find this interesting, so please read on).
(And even if you loathe Trump and all his works, I still think you'll find this interesting, so please read on).
On the second day of his Asian tour President Donald J. Trump (for it is he) took part in a fish-feeding ceremony at Toyko's Akasaka palace with Japan's PM Shinzo Abe. One widely-distributed piece of footage of the event [the one the BBC was using this morning] shows the two leaders doling out spoonfuls of food to the koi below and then, after the camera zooms in and Mr Abe's hands go out of view, Mr Trump is shown upending his wooden container and dumping the rest of the food into the pool below.
Other widely-distributed pieces of footage were crudely edited versions which made it seem even more like Mr Trump was behaving like a dolt:
Other widely-distributed pieces of footage were crudely edited versions which made it seem even more like Mr Trump was behaving like a dolt:
A social media outcry against Mr Trump ensued: 'Impatient!', 'Behaving like a four-year old!' and 'How rude to his Japanese hosts!' were among the politer things written about the insensitive oaf.
Naturally sections of the mainstream media were just as uproarious, and the Independent's headline will give you a flavour of such reporting:
Now, all was not as it seemed. Other footage showed the bit that the zooming-in mentioned above concealed, and revealed that Mr Abe had in fact upended his wooden container first and that Mr Trump was only following suit:
The Guardian gives a very good account of all of this, and (to their credit) notes the major role that mainstream media reporters played in spreading this little titbit of 'fake news':
White House reporters, keen perhaps to pick up on a Trump gaffe, captured the moment when he upended his box on their smartphones and tweeted evidence of his questionable grasp of fish keeping.
However, other footage made clear that Trump was merely following his host’s lead.
But what of the BBC? Did they do themselves proud by steering clear of this piece of 'fake news'?
Of course not.
Anthony Zurcher, who never misses a chance to carp at Donald Trump, certainly wasn't coy about it, positively leaping at the chance to (shark) snark at the US president:
And - far more importantly - the BBC News Channel made complete fools of themselves this morning.
Using as a backdrop the footage from Toyko TV that didn't show Mr Abe upending the food first, this exchange between a BBC presenter and a BBC reporter took place.
It shows BBC 'fake news' in full swing. Why didn't they check?
Enjoy!:
Annita McVeigh: And Steve, just on another subject entirely, it was meant to be a good photo opportunity, but even that drew controversy. It seems to follow Donald Trump around. It was about feeding some koi carp earlier and his fish feeding technique was called into question, wasn't it?
Steve McDonnell: Yes, when these leadership summits happen people watch everything that they do. When Donald Trump first arrived and had his first meal here and it was a hamburger people were like, "What do you mean? You flew all the way to Toyko and you're having a hamburger!". And yes, that's right. They went to feed some fish, some koi carp, and I guess you're just supposed to feed them little by little, but at some point Donald Trump, he tips the whole lot of fish food in one go into the water. And he's being criticised I guess for being uncouth in his behaviour. But when it all comes down to, I guess if you are going to compare that to North Korea's nuclear weapons or the importance of global trade, I think in the next couple of days we'll probably be forgetting about the great carp incident.
Annita McVeigh: A lack of strategic patience there. Steve, thanks very much.
Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
