Stop Airing Trump’s Briefings!
The
media is allowing disinformation to appear as news.
Opinion
Columnist
·
April 19, 2020
Around this time four years ago, the
media world was all abuzz over an analysis by mediaQuant, a company that tracks
what is known as “earned media” coverage of political candidates. Earned media
is free media.
The firm computed that Donald Trump had
“earned” a whopping $2 billion of coverage, dwarfing the value earned by all
other candidates, Republican and Democrat, even as he had only purchased about
$10 million of paid advertising.
As The New York Times reported at the time, the company’s
chief analytics officer, Paul Senatori, explained: “The mediaQuant model
collects positive, neutral and negative media mentions alike. Mr. Senatori said
negative media mentions are given somewhat less weight.”
This wasn’t the first analysis that found
that something was askew.
In
December 2015 CNN quoted the publisher of
The Tyndall Report, which also tracks media coverage, saying Trump was “by far
the most newsworthy story line of campaign 2016, accounting alone for more than
a quarter of all coverage’ on NBC, CBS and ABC’s evening newscasts.”
Simply put, the media was complicit in
Trump’s rise. Trump was macabre theater, a man self-immolating in real time,
one who was destined to lose, but who could provide entertainment, content and
yes, profits while he lasted.
The Hollywood Reporter in
February of 2016 quoted CBS’s C.E.O. as saying, “It may not be good for
America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” because as The Reporter put it, “He likes
the ad money Trump and his competitors are bringing to the network.”
I fear that history is repeating
itself.
For over a month now, the White House
has been holding its daily coronavirus briefings, and most networks, cable news
channels and major news websites have been carrying all or parts of them live,
as millions of people, trapped inside and anxious, have tuned in.
The briefings are marked by Trump’s own
misinformation, deceptions, rage, blaming and boasting. He takes no
responsibility at all for his abysmal handling of the crisis, while each day he
seems to find another person to blame, like a child frantically flinging
spaghetti at a wall to see which one sticks.
He
delivers his disinformation flanked by scientists and officials, whose presence
only serves to convey credibility to propagandistic performances that have
simply become a replacement for his political rallies.
We are in the middle of a pandemic, but
we are also in the middle of a presidential campaign, and I shudder to think
how much “earned media” the media is simply shoveling Trump’s way by airing
these briefings, which can last up to two hours a day.
Let me be clear: Under no circumstance
should these briefings be carried live. Doing so is a mistake bordering on
journalistic malpractice. Everything a president does or says should be
documented but airing all of it, unfiltered, is lazy and irresponsible.
As the veteran anchor Ted Koppel told
The New York Times last month, “Training a camera on a live event, and
just letting it play out, is technology, not journalism; journalism requires
editing and context.” He continued, “The question, clearly, is whether his
status as president of the United States obliges us to broadcast his every
briefing live.” His answer was “no.”
We have trained the American television
audience to understand that regular programs are only interrupted for live
events when they are truly important, things that the viewers need to see now,
in real time. These briefings simply don’t reach that threshold. In fact, some
of what Trump has said has been dangerous, like when he pushed an unproven and
potentially harmful drug as a treatment for the virus.
No amount of fact checkers, balancing
with the briefings of governors, or even occasionally cutting away, can justify
carrying these briefings live. The scant amount of new information that these
rallies produce could be edited into a short segment for a show. The major
headlines from these briefings are often Trump’s clashes with reporters, the
differences he has with scientists and the lies he tells. Just like in 2016,
it’s all theater.
Donald Trump doesn’t care about being
caught in a lie. Donald Trump doesn’t care about the truth.
Donald Trump is a bare-knuckled
politician with imperial impulses, falsely claiming that,
“When somebody’s the president of the U.S., the authority is total,” encouraging protesters bristling about social
distancing policies to “liberate” swings states, and saying that Speaker Nancy
Pelosi will be “overthrown, either by inside
or out.”
Trump
has completely politicized this pandemic and the briefings have become a tool
of that politicization. He is standing on top of nearly 40,000 dead bodies and
using the media to distract attention away from them and instead brag about
what a great job he’s done.
In 2016, Trump stormed the castle by
outwitting the media gatekeepers, exploiting their need for content and access,
their intense hunger for ratings and clicks, their economic hardships and
overconfidence.
It’s all happening again. The media has
learned nothing.
Charles Blow joined The Times in 1994 and
became an Opinion columnist in 2008. He is also a television commentator and
writes often about politics, social justice and vulnerable communities.
