Trump Is Gone, but the Media’s Misinformation Challenge Is Still Here

Should news outlets contextualize false claims made by powerful people? Or ignore them completely? There is no consensus in the industry, but its thinking continues to evolve.

Inside a room at the Cannon House Office Building on Tuesday, witnesses testified to their experience on Jan. 6, when an armed mob egged on by President Donald J. Trump breached the Capitol. It eventually reached the Senate chamber, where senators had been certifying Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory under the gavel of Vice President Mike Pence, whom some of the rioters chanted that they wanted to hang. But outside the room, prominent Republicans have painted a very different, significantly misleading picture of that day. On Tuesday morning, Representative Elise Stefanik of New York falsely blamed Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, for the breach, saying she had ignored evidence that the Capitol’s security might be compromised in favor of her own “partisan political optics.”