Watch the whole thing.
If you think the Chris Licht version of CNN was particularly craven toward Trump, or that Trump is an outlier in the battle of ‘fake news’ vs. reality, watch David Letterman spin out the tale of Tyler Crotty.
In short, back in 2004, 13-year-old Tyler was standing right behind George W. Bush, trying to keep awake through an hour-long speech. Letterman aired clips of Crotty stretching and yawning.
During the next night’s show, Letterman aired a clip of anchor Daryn Kagan (who would announce she was dating Rush Limbaugh later that year) saying the White House had told CNN that the clip was a fake, with the young man edited in. Letterman called the White House liars.
Later in the show, Letterman announced that CNN had changed their story, with a different anchor claiming that the kid had been at the speech, but hadn’t been standing behind Bush. Letterman called that a lie as well.
Now it would have been easy enough for CNN to verify whether or not the video was real. They could have called the Letterman show to find out which video feed of the March 20 campaign speech they used (it wasn’t C-SPAN’s, which was shot from directly in front of the podium; whatever feed it was came from a camera to the right of the stage, though you can see Crotty in long shots of the stage).
By the next day, the story had changed again, with CNN claiming they hadn’t been contacted by the White House at all, despite having said twice (with two different stories) the night before that they had.
Anyway, do watch the video to the end for the full story (as if this wasn’t enough).