The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, recently gave a press briefing about Palestinians killed close to an aid distribution centre in Gaza on June 1. A key question, she suggested, was whether the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were really to blame, as had been reported.
“Unlike some in the media, we don’t take the word of Hamas as total truth,” she said. “We like to look into it when they speak, unlike the BBC.”
Given the explosive war of words that has broken out between US president Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk, Leavitt’s accusation may now appear to be small potatoes. But it matters: this is the latest twist of Trump’s undermining of a free press that has been evolving since he first repeated the words back in 2016 that would shake the public’s belief in journalism: “Fake news!”
