A few weeks ago the Republican Party ran a list of the ten worst examples of fake news for 2017 (one of these was actually an election night tweet from 2016). The Washington Post fact checkers promptly gave this list a Pinocchio rating on the bases that 7 of the 10 had issued corrections or apologized. Sorry, WaPo but it doesn't work that way. While it's true that the news media makes mistakes all the time and issues corrections later, that is not an excuse for these. None of these represented breaking news like a fire or shooting. They were all events that happened some time before the story broke but were released before all the facts were known. There is no good reason to release stories like this (there is a bad reason: stories that embarrass President Trump sell papers/increase rating and the various media are afraid of being scooped). There are several problems with running a story then issuing a correction or retracting the story later.
The biggest problem is that the corrections are never given as much play as the original story. Sometimes they correction is tacked onto the end of the story. Other times the story is quietly withdrawn without notice. Corrections are never given the same sensational headlines. Worse, many people hear about these stories from other sources than the original. I first heard the story that candidate Trump had ordered Michael Flynn to meet with the Russians through Facebook. I never saw anyone sharing the retraction that it was president-elect Trump who ordered the meeting and it was about sanctions against Israel, not about winning the election. The Trump-haters who gleefully share anything that looks bad for the President never bother to share the retractions or corrections (assuming they even hear about them).
A second problem is that all of these stories create false memories. Even if people see the corrections later they are still likely to remember that there had been some scandal involving the President and Russia (or whatever the story was). The stead drumbeat of Trump/Russia stories gives the impression that there is something to them. A reasonable person would assume that this constant barrage of stories is a "where there's smoke there's fire" situation. To date, there are no credible stories about Russian collusion.but a recent poll indicated that half the country believes that such an event took place.
What else can you call it when the news media has convinced half of the public that something happened with no proof? It's Fake News.
And no, the President calling out the media on the false reporting they do does not make him an autocrat.
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