President Trump has announced his “fake news awards.”

Hard to blame him. He’s been subject to lots of slipshod reporting, much of it coated with contempt. The President’s sometimes outlandish comments have not helped him, of course. But he invites an important question: What is “fake news?”

The term implies deliberate hoaxes, intentional lies designed to mislead. This means that a whole lot of media folk are purposely lying, and doing so pretty consistently.

While there are occasions where reporters outright lie, most of the time the truth is a bit less sensational.

I served as a press secretary in both the House and Senate. Later, I was director of corporate communications at the nation’s largest manufacturing trade association. I’ve dealt with nationally known journalists and reporters in little towns. This does not make me the final authority on the press, but I’ve observed a few things over the years.

There’s an Agenda to Push

First, no reporter is completely objective. All have points of view based on conviction, life experience, education and so forth. But the late David Brinkley had it right when he said no one could be completely objective — but all journalists need to be fair.

That’s where a lot of reporters fail. They are not interested in fairness but, instead, of skewing a story according to their own predispositions.

Honest, intelligent questions asked politely but firmly are a reporter’s stock-in-trade. Or should be.

Second, a good number of reporters are propagandists. They unashamedly try to stir-up those who agree with them and persuade those who are undecided.

I once challenged a television reporter whose liberal bias seeped through his entire story. In his story, he had three opponents of a GOP proposal and one Republican to support it. It was clear he had an agenda.

When I called him on this, he said with smug disinterest that he thought the one conservative was enough. No apology, no explanation.

They’re Just Humans

Third, being tough isn’t the same thing as being unfair. Some reporters who try to play things down the middle get rapped by conservatives simply for asking difficult questions.

In 1979 when CBS newsman Roger Mudd interviewed Ted Kennedy about his planned run for the presidency, Kennedy expected softball questions from Mudd, a friend. Instead, Mudd did his job and asked him straightforward questions. Kennedy could not even give a coherent answer to the question, “Why do you want to be president?” Jimmy Carter, beaten dramatically by Ronald Reagan, beat Kennedy handily.

Honest, intelligent questions asked politely but firmly are a reporter’s stock-in-trade. Or should be.

Fourth, reporters are people. They get offended and sometimes respond with hostility as a result. When they are insulted or called names or belittled, they can get testy in return. This is commonly called being human.

Ignorance and Laziness

Fifth, many reporters don’t know what they don’t know. Many of them have never seriously considered the biases they bring to their jobs.

As a result, a lot of people in the “mainstream media,” whose liberal bent is all too apparent to us conservatives, are unaware of how one-sided their questions are.

For example, last month NBC’s Savannah Guthrie asked House Speaker Paul Ryan, “Are you living in a fantasy world?” when Ryan asserted the Republican tax reduction plan would help ordinary Americans. I suspect Guthrie knows little about economics and doubt she had read the GOP bill. And I’d place a hefty bet that she never spoke with conservative economists who believe the tax plan will provide real benefits for middle-income families.

Put simply, her political leanings and utter confidence in what she thinks she knows combine to make her a poster child for liberal bias. And Guthrie is, I would also bet, quite uncaring about it. Us mean-spirited, Wall Street-owned ignoramuses deserve whatever we get.

Their presuppositions are left-of-center, so they are more disposed to give credence to left-of-center arguments.

Sixth, a lot of reporters are lazy. They don’t want to understand the massive federal bureaucracy but just accept it as something that should always be, a political Rock of Gibraltar. So, the inefficiencies that run through Washington like thread in a carpet are immaterial to them.

They don’t really want to understand the Constitution, the need for personal and public virtue, the nature of the republican system of government established by the Founders, or why conservatives are so skeptical of grand plans to transform America.

Their presuppositions are left-of-center. This means they will be more disposed to give credence to the arguments of a Chuck Schumer than, say, a Marco Rubio.

It’s Hard to Swim Against the Current

Seventh, most reporters are products of journalism schools where their professors are overwhelmingly liberal. Impressionable young men and women don’t want to be seen as contrarian (they need to get jobs, right?) or be belittled in their classes (“Everyone knows capitalism is evil, you idiot!”, said the award-winning journalist-turned-instructor to the student who says she likes the free market).

So, they learn how to take notes at a news conference and project themselves nicely on camera. But they lack intellectual depth and, in most cases, intellectual curiosity. Especially since they’ve been blessed by the received wisdom of the (almost invariably) liberal elite in their profession of choice.

Eighth, the news is a tough industry. With the advent of the Internet, smartphones, and cable news, the competition for viewers and readers is more than vigorous — it is fierce. As a result, “breaking news” is constant, even if it’s reported before all the facts are in. The reporting of news is a business. Advertisers gravitate to those outlets with the biggest audiences. That often means larger-than-truth headlines and news banners.

“Fake news” is an unfortunate phrase. The mainstream media are less about dishonesty than they are about bias.

Ninth, sometimes getting the truth is hard. Reporters are courted by advocacy groups, politicians, and special interests from every perspective. It is hard to ferret-out what’s accurate and what isn’t. So, sometimes the media get their facts wrong. This is not excuse for sloppiness but does explain why some mistakes are made.

A Very Real Bias

Tenth and finally, most journalists are irreligious. This is not a criticism but a fact: “[T]he Pew Research Center for the People and the Press reported in 2007 that 8 percent of journalists surveyed at national media outlets said they attended church or synagogue weekly. The survey also found 29 percent never attend such services, with 39 percent reporting they go a few times a year.”

If the tenets of orthodox Christianity are foreign and even detestable to you, how can you cover them fairly? This is why my late, beloved friend Mike Cromartie ran his “Faith Angle Forum” for many years — to familiarize secular journalists with the beliefs of faithful Christians. It’s why the American Journalism Center’s Terry Mattingly hosts his “Get Religion” blog/news site.

Back to “fake news.” It’s an unfortunate phrase. The mainstream media are less about dishonesty than they are about bias. And that’s not fake — it’s very real.