Remember our report yesterday on CNN’s quotes from past presidents about a free press and how important facts are? Well, as it turns out, a couple of the quotes were just plain fake. We were so busy laughing at the unintentional irony of the tweets — the gall that CNN would lecture anyone on facts — that we didn’t notice the error. But thanks to Quote Investigator, the network is yet again called out for spreading fake news.
@CNNPolitics tweeted a picture of Abraham Lincoln and attributed him this quote: “Let the people know the facts, and the country will be safe.” However, that’s not exactly right. Quote Investigator was alerted by Terry Teachout, a critic and playwright, who said, “This quote, though familiar, looks suspicious to me. Any thoughts?”
On Wednesday, a newspaper clipping from April 21, 1865, was posted to Twitter which quoted Mr. Lincoln as saying, “Let them know the truth, and the country is safe.”
The Atlantic’s Yoni Appelbaum also found a different clipping from April 17, 1865, which also quoted Lincoln saying, “Let them know the truth, and the country is safe.”
Again, CNN quoted, “Let the people know the facts, and the country will be safe.” It is quoted this way at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. (pic source):
Though it’s a subtle difference, it’s an important one, as The Federalist explained:
Insofar as a hearsay quote should ever be tweeted out or inscribed in walls, at least it should be accurate. Particularly when it’s about “truth” and “facts.” We’ll leave aside discussions of whether the great Abraham Lincoln’s record on press freedoms means he should be honored at the Newseum. The quote, in context, is about public opinion being so against the Civil War, due to what Lincoln said was people being misled, that they would have accepted disunion over a continued fight.
The conflation of “facts” and “truth” is perfect. Facts can be manipulated. Truth is much more difficult to attain. It might be factual that intelligence chiefs briefed President-elect Trump about a Russian dossier, for instance. But whether that fact is used to spin a Russian conspiracy hoax is where truthfulness is important.
Then there was a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin that wasn’t featured in our story:
The Federalist learned that quote comes from “British writers John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, authors of Cato’s Letters.”
Coincidentally, this is an unearthed meme Lincoln wrote years before the Internet:
