PBS Newshour's Judy Woodruff: Why we never say President Trump is lying

Entertainment Weekly

“I understand it's a term that’s used a lot now in news coverage, our view is that lying is not a term we can use lightly,” Woodruff said at the TCA TV press tour. “When you use the term ‘lie’ you’re saying whatever was said was said with intention. We can’t know what’s in someone mind, so we’re much more comfortable with when somebody says something that cannot be born out by the facts, we say what they said was ‘inaccurate’ or ‘false’…but we can’t dwell on that, we can’t stop the broadcast every few minutes to say something a political leader is saying …we have to make judgment calls on that. I will tell you, the first time I had to say on the air the president said something that was not accurate, I got a lump in my throat. It’s not something journalists are accustomed to doing. This is a different time. That said, we have to be very, very careful how we talk about what the president said because he’s still the president.”