President Joe Biden speaks at the White House Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House, Monday, April 1, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

It’s been hard to miss the recent news headlines about the latest campaign controversy between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. It sure sounds pretty serious: The New York Times says it’s a “partisan storm.” The Associated Press calls it a “clash.” Politico labels it a “culture war.” Other news stories use dramatic descriptions like outrage and fury, with some even describing it as a “War on Easter.”

But wait. Is this a legitimate “both sides” story with Republicans on one side of an issue and Democrats on the other? Or is it a right-wing disinformation ploy to create manufactured outrage over religious and gender issues in an election year? I’m picking door number two: faux outrage built on lies.

That’s a tried-and-true Republican political strategy that typically starts on social media, gets amplified by right-wing propaganda and then oozes its way into mainstream news coverage. But once again some reporters (and headline writers) aren’t doing nearly enough to report these efforts with meaningful context. And so, Republicans are scoring another win in their disinformation war.

Like most lies, the ones about the so-called “War on Easter” began when Republican partisans started outrage posting last week. (Chris Geidner of Law Dork has a good look at how the phony issue caught fire.) They attacked President Biden for “disrespecting or even replacing Easter” because Transgender Day of Visibility happened to fall on the same date.

Here are the facts. Trans Visibility Day is not new, and Joe Biden did not schedule it to conflict with Easter. It has been on March 31 since its inception nearly 15 years ago. Last week, Biden shared a public proclamation noting the Trans Visibility Day. As Parker Molloy’s newsletter points out, Biden also issued 10 other proclamations that same day.

Plus, for anyone keeping track, March 31 is also National Farm Worker Day, Eiffel Tower Day, National Crayon Day, etc. Easter is not fixed to the calendar. This year, the holidays coincided. Next year, they will not.

This “War on Easter” lie was a two-fer. Many Republicans and propaganda outlets were also venting over what they claimed were discriminatory decoration protocols for eggs used in the annual White House Easter Egg Roll. Angry screeds claimed the Biden administration was prohibiting religious designs on those eggs. But guess what? That was also false. The Chicago-based National Egg Board has had the same rules for over 50 years, so that means these very same policies that set Republican’s hair on fire were in place during Trump’s administration as well as numerous administrations.

In a surprising turn of events, the right-wing Daily Caller has actually retracted its angry story on the egg décor, saying it “became aware of additional context that undercut the central assertion of this article and its newsworthiness…” Why it published a false story in the first place we’ll never know, but the Daily Caller should get some credit for the retraction. I wonder if other news outlets will do the same?

The “War on Easter” falsehoods got the biggest push from the Trump campaign. Once Trump weighed in, the mainstream news coverage started treating this like a campaign dispute and we got the ‘partisan storm’ type headlines.   Biden and Trump do have very different points of view on the transgender community and that would make an interesting news story.  But these so-called “Easter’ issues are not about that. Instead, this yet another example of Trump latching on to lies to try to damage his political opponent. I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: when Donald Trump creates a fake issue, it is a disservice to the public for journalists to treat it as real and cover it as legitimate disagreement.

But it’s not all bad news. These news outlets didn’t fall for the “both sides” framing on the faux Easter outrage and are worth a read:

I was also impressed to see some reporters write on what I think was a solid story about Biden and Trump on Easter: the contrasts between their holiday messages. Look at their social media posts:

Imagine if instead of the nearly hysterical news headlines about a phony war on Easter, we had more stories like this one from David Cohen of Politico. This reports on the drastically different Easter messages from the candidates but there are dozens of other compare/contrast stories to be done as well.  Now that would be meaningful journalism.

Jennifer Schulze is a former Chicago journalist who talks media every month on WCPT 820AM on “Live, Local & Progressive with Joan Esposito” with former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacob. You can follow her on Threads @jenniferschulzechi or Twitter/X @NewsJennifer.