'Fake News': Why Donald Trump should take note of 'bully pulpit'

Hopefully, the announcement that the Collins Dictionary has declared “fake news” to be the word of the year is not fake news. US President Donald Trump, the loudest voice on the issue, will probably point out that it’s not even one word, it’s two. Significantly, the news was carried by many media outlets, just like all the other events Mr Trump has called out as “fake news” in the past.

The Collins Dictionary’s head of language content has vouched for its authenticity, but then she also said, “Fake news, either as a statement of fact or as an accusation, has been inescapable this year, contributing to the undermining of society’s trust in news reporting,” which the US President could take as a veiled attack on him, automatically making it fake news in his dictionary.

It isn’t fake news that the use of the term has gone up 365% in the past year and other world leaders have used it with great glee too. But Trump’s claim that he invented it is fake news, as another dictionary, Merriam-Webster, has unearthed ‘fake news’ references from the 1890s. Someone should tell him about a term genuinely attributed to a predecessor, Potus No. 26, Theodore Roosevelt: bully pulpit. It’s a prominent post that gives the holder a platform to speak out and per force be listened to. Bully, of course, didn’t mean what it does now, in Roosevelt’s time.