Two prominent critics warned on Monday that the US corporate media is not being aggressive enough in calling out the Trump administration’s lies about Alex Pretti, the Minneapolis resident who was slain by federal immigration agents over the weekend.
Writing on her Substack page, former New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan expressed concern that many mainstream media publications were taking a wait-and-see approach in the wake of Pretti’s shooting, even as the Trump administration, Fox News, and other right-wing media websites were pumping out false claims about Pretti brandishing a weapon at federal officials and being a “domestic terrorist.”
Sullivan did praise many outlets, including the Times, the Washington Post, and CNN, for doing detailed and accurate breakdowns of videos showing Pretti’s fatal encounter with federal agents.
However, she was dismayed that these outlets frequently hedged their language by saying that video evidence of the Pretti killing merely “appears to” contradict the administration’s claims.
“If the analyses do indeed ‘directly contradict’ the government’s claims, then say so—without fear or favor, as the motto goes,” Sullivan emphasized. “With what amounts to civil war raging in the United States, we desperately need clear, fearless truth-telling that doesn’t pull its punches and doesn’t hand a megaphone to lies and propaganda in the name of supposed fairness.”
Former CNN anchor Jim Acosta similarly criticized US media outlets for being too timid in contradicting the administration’s lies about the Pretti killing.
On his own Substack page, Acosta argued that “the truth immediately came under assault” after federal agents fatally shot Pretti.
Despite possessing video evidence that showed the administration was lying about Pretti’s death, Acosta wrote, too many mainstream news outlets “tiptoed around the truth” rather than stating it plainly.
“There were lies,” Acosta said of the administration’s response. “Lie after lie after lie. The videos from the scene did more than just ‘contradict’ the government account of what occurred, as the [Wall Street Journal] described it. The reality is that the eyewitness footage revealed that the administration was flat out lying to the public. Our eyes and ears told us what happened. Too many news reports simply chose not to reflect that."
Acosta reserved particular scorn for Politico, which ran a headline stating that “a battle over the truth erupts after deadly Minneapolis shooting,” even though multiple videos of the incident had already been published showing exactly what the truth was.
“Federal officials, like [Stephen] Miller, were lying,” Acosta said, referring to Trump’s deputy chief of staff and homeland security adviser. “Full stop. Politico needed to say that.”