Maria Puente

USA TODAY

Denzel Washington, an actual victim of a "fake news" lie, aimed his critical eye at the mainstream media — while standing on a red carpet talking to the mainstream media — as the real purveyors of today's untruths and twaddle.

We live in an era of "too much information," the Oscar winner said, adding that one of the consequences is the pressure on the media to be first is greater than the need to be true.

"So what a responsibility you all have — to tell the truth," Washington exclaimed, laughing, to the pack of reporters gathered on the red carpet Tuesday for a special screening of his new film, Fences, at the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American Museum of History and Culture in Washington.





"If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you do read it, you're misinformed," he said, as reported in The Hill. "In our society, now it's just first — who cares, get it out there. We don't care who it hurts. We don't care who we destroy. We don't care if it's true. Just say it, sell it. Anything you practice you'll get good at — including BS."

Washington's remarks about the alleged sins of the mainstream media come months after he himself was the center of a phony story that circulated online this fall: It falsely claimed Washington had dropped his support of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to endorse GOP nominee Donald Trump.

The fake story was shared thousands of times before it was removed — after the mainstream media debunked it.

Washington was in the capital on Tuesday to promote and screen Fences, based on an acclaimed play of the same name by August Wilson. The Oscar-buzzy film, about the life of a black former baseball player and his family in 1950s Pittsburgh, opens on Dec. 25.

Washington directed and co-starred in the film, which reunites the cast of the 2010 Broadway run of the play including Emmy winner Viola Davis.

Denzel Washington and Viola Davis will move you in first 'Fences' trailer