Story highlights Professor George Lakoff: The media should use a new method of fact-checking Trump

The current fact checking approaches only "strengthen" Trump

(CNN) An American academic said Sunday that though fact-checking President Donald Trump is essential, the media currently are getting it all wrong.

"You do need the facts but you need to know how to present those facts," George Lakoff, a professor of cognitive science and linguistics at UC Berkeley, told CNN's Brian Stelter during "Reliable Sources."

From the crowd size at his inauguration to national murder rates , journalists have tended to simply counter Trump's claims by first repeating them -- then reporting that they are false. But that's not enough, Lakoff said. The central tenet of his theory when it comes to fact-checking Trump, Lakoff said, is that "if you just negate what he's saying, you're going to just strengthen him."

In short, "the very fact of repeating a falsehood in proclaiming it as incorrect can actually have the opposite effect in terms of informing the public," the professor said.

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