One incident involved the president of the United States and one involved Kentucky high school students, but both cases found major media assuming the worst over the last several days and widely broadcasting news that wasn't true.
Is it any wonder increasing numbers of Americans don't believe what they see, hear and read on or in what used to be impartial media sources? And regrettably, those incidents only serve to impugn all news sources, including ones that want to provide the same important, impartial information they always have to their readers and viewers.
The incident involving President Trump was a report by BuzzFeed News declaring that investigators in special counsel Robert Mueller's office had evidence showing the president had directed his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, to lie to Congress about onetime-candidate Trump's prospective business deal in Moscow.
More than anything else alleged to that point, the report seemed to indicate the president had committed a crime that could lead to articles of impeachment being drawn against him.
Democrats, never ones to let the truth slow down a chance to criticize, threaten or insult Trump, readied the noose.
"If the @BuzzFeed story is true," U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, tweeted after the story was published, "President Trump must resign or be impeached."
The report, apparently, was so full of holes that the famously silent special prosecutor's office felt strong enough to issue a statement.
"BuzzFeed's description of specific statements to the special counsel's office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen's congressional testimony are not accurate," Peter Carr, a spokesman for Mueller, said.
We don't know what that office eventually will conclude, but we know lies - and the rush for once-credible media to repeat them without corroborating them - aren't fair to Trump or to a public that should be able to count on a national media to be square with it.
The second incident involved students from Covington Catholic High School and seemed to have legs only because several of the students, in Washington, D.C., for Friday's March for Life, wore caps emblazoned with the words "Make America Great Again."
There's nothing more evil, after all, than a red cap.
The scenario that most of the national media ran with had boys from the high school surrounding Native American activist Nathan Phillips, who was in the city for the Indigenous Peoples March. A viral video clip from the scene showed a teenage boy with one of the caps, Nick Sandmann, staring at Phillips.
"Boys in 'Make America Great Again' Hats Mob Native Elder at Indigenous Peoples March," The New York Times story breathlessly headlined its report.
Few would be surprised The Times and The Washington Post would jump on such stories, but some conservative media bit as well, as did the Covington Catholic Diocese and high school officials, who apologized for their students' supposed behavior.
Only later did the truth begin to dribble out. The Catholic high school students, who were waiting for buses to take them back to Kentucky, were being taunted with racial and homosexual slurs by members of the Black Hebrew Israelites. Some of the students jeered in protest, and at least one rebuked the Black Hebrew Israelites for using anti-gay language.
Into the fray came Phillips, a fact he admitted Sunday, pounding his drum in the middle of the students. While Phillips said he wanted to defuse any confrontation between the black activists and the students, apparently not all of his compatriots had the same idea.
"White people go back to Europe where you came from," one of the Native American activists shouted at the students. "This is not your land."
Sandmann, who revealed his family had received death threats over the event, even tried to calm a classmate as the classmate was being cursed. Staring at Phillips, he said he was trying to lower the temperature in the tense situation by remaining "motionless and calm." He did admit smiling at Phillips "because I wanted him to know I was not going to become angry, intimidated or be provoked into a larger confrontation."
He said he was "mortified that so many people have come to believe something that did not happen - that students from my school were chanting or acting in a racist fashion toward African Americans or Native Americans. I did not do that, do not have hateful feelings in my heart and did not witness any of my classmates doing that."
Several media figures apologized once the fuller picture emerged, but the salient point is whether it will make any difference the next time BuzzFeed releases a story on the Mueller investigation or when a high school student wearing a red hat is found in the middle of any controversy.
If the truth ultimately is second to anything that makes Trump look bad, the public is last. And the trust in media of every kind erodes just a little bit more.