What would Lincoln say about the media and misinformation?

The problem of misrepresentation was one I contended with throughout my public life, and I have strong views upon it. In my letter to Nathaniel P. Paschall, written in November of 1860, I addressed the habit of certain papers that had persistently garbled what I had said. I urged that if they would fully and fairly place my actual record before their readers, much of the public unease would dissolve on its own. The difficulty was not that the truth was hidden — it was in print and open to inspection. The difficulty was that some editors preferred the distortion. I also observed that repeating a correction to those determined not to hear it accomplishes little. As I wrote in that same letter, “to press it upon those who have refused to listen, and still refuse, would be wanting in self-respect, and would have an appearance of sycophancy and timidity, which would excite the contempt of good men, and encourage bad ones to clamor the more loudly”. And at the Baltimore Sanitary Fair, I noted a Richmond paper that had been “ascribing to one cause what is justly due to another” — bending plain facts to a political purpose. My counsel is this: seek the full record, read it fairly, and do not mistake a fragment of the truth, however loudly repeated, for the whole of it.