Another week, another gaffe for Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson.

Or was it?

Several weeks ago, Johnson came under fire for not being able to identify Aleppo as a major Middle Eastern tension point that fuels the refugee crisis. That was inexcusable; the next President of the United States should not only be able to identify Aleppo, but should be able to speak at length about their policies regarding the refugee crisis and the Islamic State. This is a political blunder in the truest sense, no argument there.

Last Wednesday, Johnson claimed he had another ‘Aleppo moment’ during a town-hall interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. A quick scan through news headlines revealed some such as The New York Times’ “Gary Johnson Can’t Name a Single Foreign Leader.”

However, a deeper look reveals that Johnson’s error may not be as egregious as the media would lead us to believe.

In fact, Matthews did not simply ask Johnson to name any foreign leader, he asked Johnson to name a current foreign leader who he admires. To this question, could any of us provide an immediate response?

The unfortunate truth is that, in today’s world, there are few foreign — or even domestic — leaders without some major flaw, particularly the ones that immediately come to mind. Especially in an election cycle where every single comment made by the candidates, particularly the conservative candidates, is put under a microscope, a lot of thought must be put into answering a question like this. Undoubtedly, the media would have found a flaw with any leader Johnson identified as being admirable.

So, naturally, Johnson stumbled, unable to provide an immediate response. When his vice presidential candidate, former Gov. William F. Weld of Massachusetts, stepped in to help, he was shut down by Matthews.

Watching the interview, it seems clear that Matthews wanted to make Johnson squirm. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton would never be subjected to this level of scrutiny and stress during an interview on MSNBC or, probably, most media outlets; she certainly wasn’t during last week’s presidential debate.

And the coverage after Johnson’s interview was just as biased against him. In addition to the misleading headlines, many news outlets provided commentary rather than facts.

In this election cycle, it’s more crucial than ever for readers to realize that the facts depend on where you read them.

For example, my impression from watching the interview was that Matthews was firing questions at Johnson not in order to help him, but rather to throw him off when it became clear that he didn’t have an immediate answer. The New York Times interpreted this as Matthews attempting to help “jog Mr. Johnson’s memory.” The article also commented that the interaction was “a painful exchange that felt significantly longer than the 50 seconds or so that it lasted.”

This sort of commentary, along with headlines stating that Johnson couldn’t name a single foreign leader, is misleading and biased. I’m not saying that Johnson is a strong candidate — at the end of the day, he still didn’t know what Aleppo was — but the media is unrealistically portraying him, playing into the bumbling stereotype that they’ve created for him.

As news consumers, it is important to recognize this, not only for Johnson, but for many other people that the media has deemed undesirable. It is our responsibility to dig deeper and get the real story, the story that the media will often not provide.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated the last name of former Gov. William F. Weld of Massachusetts and incorrectly characterized the city of Aleppo. The above article has been updated with the correct information. The Daily Collegian apologizes for this error.