Earned media coverage
Charles Blow says stop running the press briefings.
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.
How does he do it? By being so grotesque we can’t ignore him. He’s “newsworthy” in that sense…so, he gets free advertising that less grotesque candidates don’t get. I think there’s a bit of a downside to this.
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.
Just one tiny flaw…
And now it’s happening again.
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.
And he does it with functioning adults standing next to him, which makes him look more like a functioning adult (until he starts talking, at least).
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.”
…
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.
The media should stop complying.
Exactly, it’s the train wreck reflex. I had to stop watching because I became unbearably disgusted with his outrageous drivel, train wreck or no. CNN.com does a good job of sifting it into about a 2 minute read, so I can get it over quickly. I tried watching a few, maybe 8 or so, but a steady diet of 2+ hours of that stupid clown is more than I’m willing to take. Enough already.
That’s one reason why I disagree with the analysts who claim that this election, we finally elected the candidate that spent the least, and that was one good thing that came out of it. When you add in all the freebies he got, it dwarfed all the other candidates. And meanwhile, Hillary tended to be carried beneath the fold, or several pages back, and always, always with dog whistle words…and her email! Her pantsuits! Her shrill voice! (I’ve got news for everyone: her voice is not shrill. Bernie is shrill, Donald is obnoxious, but Hillary was measured and reasonable…though often hoarse, because candidates often get hoarse. Donald never seems to. His voice is trained for screaming and ranting).
I’ve been saying for years, now, that Donnie Dumpsterfire owes his presidency to CNN, specifically. I worked in a newspaper newsroom during that election. TVs were tuned to CNN all the time, because they do a good job of getting early info.
Not only were Trump’s press conferences during the campaign covered beginning to end, but they also would routinely have a half hour or more of ‘pre-game’ coverage–talking heads discussing what he was likely to say, while focusing on an empty podium with the bottom headline along the lines of, “Trump to speak shortly”. Without the allegedly liberal media, Trump would’ve been an also-ran very early on.
By way of contrast: Angela Merkel.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/04/angela-merkel-germany-coronavirus-pandemic/610225/
Omar, it’s also telling that our daily briefings come from the Robert Koch Institute, and not from Merkel. I think she’s had maybe three press conferences since this thing started.
Ex GOP never Trumper Tom Nichols described today’s presser nicely on Twitter…
One other stark difference between Trump and Merkel is that she has no patience for the idiots urging us to re-open. She even coined a new word, “Öffnungsdiskussionsorgien”, which she used disparagingly in a recent discussion over the topic.
Coining words in this way in German is not particularly difficult because of how German works, but this particular word translates somewhat to “Orgies of discussions about opening up” (as in opening up the country) too early, which Merkel warned would make a second shutdown inevitable, with even more disastrous economic and public-health consequences.
Germany has a federal system by design, partly because it is a successor state of the (not-holy, not-Roman, not-an-empire) Holy Roman Empire, whose hundreds of constituents spent centuries fighting against each other at least as much as against kingdoms outside of the HRE…and partly because the last time Germany had a strong central government, the man with the funny little moustache who wound up leading it thought “Germany” should extend from the Irish Sea to the Urals.
But, in any case, it is not ultimately Merkel’s decision. She can urge, and cajole, and caution, but it is up to the sixteen state leaders to cooperate with her, and with one another. It looks like this is happening to a decent extent so far, though there is still quite a bit of variation in mask policies (and certainly in mask availability) and expected school re-openings, so we are by no means out of the woods here. I expect not to leave my flat for more than a grocery trip or a bike ride to a relatively less-crowded place for about a year, until we have a vaccine.
#3, I dunno Freemage, did you vote for Trump because of CNN? No, me neither. :) The Trumpies watch Fox because it’s His Will.