I absolutely agree with that. It takes real time to dig for information, and the constant cycle killed the profession because there was too much time to fill – and then opinion got confused with fact, making more than just a mess of what we consider fact, reality, and truth – but it began to divide people, even when they were agreeing with each other. You can’t even remember what you hear, and then blur it with other things, forgetting details…and it is too easy to exploit the visuals of a newscast.
I remember one anecdote from the 1980s where Lesley Stahl did a story about who Ronald Reagan’s campaign were manipulating people with patriotic visuals, and they called her after the story aired, thanking her for giving them free press because people saw the visuals as they tuned her out, and she realized her error. That was before the 24-hour news cycle. There are consequences to presentation, and when you are just throwing things out there, your message gets distorted and destroyed.
I think CNN et al should experiment with abandoning the “interview the Mouth of Sauron” approach, which does nothing but transmit propaganda from the White House, and refuse to accept any communications from the Executive Branch unless they are from a nonpartisan independent source. Or perhaps only accept official news releases which they can review for lies before communicating on-air.
I dunno, really, but letting Trump’s cronies speak is counterproductive at best.
I, for one, am not going to listen to a word coming out of Spicer, Conway or Trump’s mouths. No point. They’ve all shown from the beginning that they just lie. Zero credibility.
I guess maybe I should read critical reports on what Trump says. The other two can just fuck off.
There is one problem with that – Trump entirely bypassed the press to become president. That is truly shocking. For a man who masterfully used the press for decades, that is a warning signal everyone should consider. Once upon a time, if you didn’t get press, you weren’t part of the game. If you got bad press, your life was destroyed. These days, it is irrelevant. All you need is Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or Facebook, and you are set for a generation.
And the media shut out itself has propagandistic advantages: the WH can say the press is being biased, and is being afraid – and they can disseminate their message to billions without a single media outlet giving him the time of day. Right now, the press is in a bind in that no matter what they do, they have no power or control. The press has no broad audience anymore – just boutique partisan ones on the left or right. They have covered canned events as real news for decades, and have reported lies as facts for just as long.
I think a good first step would be to stop reporting on pseudo-celebrities cold turkey because that is precisely how they got into trouble in the first place. They made a deal with the devil in the 1980s, and the devil collected last November. Put a ban on the trivial and refocus their mandate because as it stands, it is a waiting game and they will burn out with what they are doing in a very short period of time.
Sort of. The missing link there is that his tweets alone are just soundbites; the media has been eating them like popcorn and breathlessly reporting on Trump’s Latest Tweet. He still relies on them to amplify and extrapolate on whatever he farts out in 140 characters. Social media alone captures several million people, but it’s the mainstream media that magnifies it for everyone else.
No, he used the press, but he used it like one of those old-timey cone megaphones instead of a sophisticated network of translators and transmitters and amplifiers. He’s still doing it. They’re obliged to cover every outrageous theatrical thing that comes out of his mouth (or Twitter.) “When you’re a star, they let you have to do it.”
No, sound bites are what counts. The shorter the message, the more potent it is. With media overload, short is what sneaks through. It is a guerrilla war tactic. It is why advertising has slogans. Think Mink was one of the most successful campaigns in the history of advertising, as was Just Do It. You lose people with blather, and the press does nothing but babble.
I agree. I’m saying that Trump doesn’t have several hundred million people following his Twitter account. The press loves his soundbites, and 140-character info-bits are what they love most, but without them, Trump would still only be talking to folks on Twitter. He needs all the rest of the media to use those bites and keep recycling them as if they’re viable news (which they are not).
He bypassed the press. He didn’t need them. Twitter won him the presidency, as did his going from grungy place to grungy place and making promises to be a civil servant to the dispossessed. The press did the rest by helping him cultivate a presence for decades. The Left are having a tough time coming to grips with being beaten by a simple strategy because they don’t see the obvious because they are over thinkers by nature. He beat the press at their own game by ignoring them, and then turning them into his own fodder to amuse his core who already hate the media. The more vitriolic the press becomes, the bigger villains they seem. To him, it must be like shooting fish in a barrel.
He doesn’t need it, either. His Tweet is a single seed. The retweets spread, and the sacred word of mouth does the rest, and after a while, he won’t even need that because he has mastered simplicity and his message will carry. He has created an entirely new war strategy that his detractors have not quite seen yet. I remember reading Howard Kurtz’s Media Circus way back in 1994 – his first chapter was Trump: The Decade. I think anyone who wants to understand his dealings with the press should read that chapter just for perspective. I re-read it again after he won – and boy, even though I read it before, somehow, right now, it is truly eye-opening.
I’m tempted to agree with you, but in order for CNN to do this successfully, all the networks will have to do so. Otherwise, people will find it suspicious that CNN isn’t covering the White House but Fox News is, and will automatically think that means Fox News is more reliable. Maybe CNN et al should explain/debunk White House communications, which is way more productive than ignoring them, and would be a welcome deviation from simply parroting them for the sake of trying to be neutral.
