Trump’s lies are not scoops
Yes.
Trump spews his newly-hatched idiotica “Jobs Not Mobs” and the media go nuts disseminating it. It’s obviously a PR phrase, no doubt developed by Stephen Miller, and honed in private sessions with focus groups. When it erupts from Trumps mouth, there are already posters created, bulletpoints on all right-wing media and GOP headliners. It’s not news. It’s a PR product. But the mainstream eats it up.
Calling this new migration a “caravan” is ridiculous. The media should be calling it a “so-called caravan”. They don’t call themselves that. Only Trump and the Right does, and they do so pejoratively. So why do the mainstream adopt the Right’s terminology lock, stock, and barrel? (I have not seen one media commentator object to the use of the term “caravan.” This is a homerun for Frank Luntz!)
In Georgia, Kemp is accusing Stacie Abrams at the very last minute of voter registration hacking. Let him. But why should the mainstream media plaster that on the front page? Especially when it is obviously a smoke screen to obscure his own blatant, malignant voter suppression and his conflict of interest when the tight vote inevitably goes to a recount and – oh, look at that! – he, as Secretary of State, gets to oversee the recount.
But, as in 2016, the media has made a devil’s bargain. The more outrageous the claims, whatever their merits, the higher the ratings. It pays to put sensationalist right-wing liars on TV. It doesnt pay to put truthful, policy-oriented Democrats on TV.
