The Failing Media is Failing Dismally, Yet Again

An opinion columnist for the New York Times has written a piece arguing that the media should stop airing the president's briefings. For over a year it seemed reasonable to me to stop broadcasting almost everything the president says to the American people. The reason is obvious: His rhetoric consists mostly of socially damaging and immoral, dark free speech.[1] What social value is there in his lies, deflections and disinformation that outweighs the damage? I see none.

The NYT opinion piece comments:

“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. 

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.’”

The editorial points out that the daily coronavirus briefings over the last 5 weeks or so have been aired extensively. They are are full of misleading and false statements, deceptions, deflections of blame from his own failures and assertions of no responsibility for his own crucial role in the failed US response to the virus. The president has scientists and officials on stage with him to lend a false appearance of credibility to his dark free speech. People trapped indoors due to coronavirus are nervous and tune into the daily dark free speech blizzard.

The press is not obligated by any law to broadcast any, some or all of what a president says. Journalism requires editing and commentary on content, including the pointing out of lies and deceit. Simply broadcasting the president’s self-serving propaganda isn't journalism. It is abdication of journalism. It is anti-journalism.

The president’s open contempt for and denial of inconvenient facts, truths and reasoning is undeniable and of staggering proportions. As of April 3, 2020, the president had made 18,000 false or misleading statements. That qualifies him as a chronic liar, which is something he has probably been at least his entire adult life.

In essence, the media has learned nothing. Once again, the for-profit American broadcast media is one of the president’s most important sources of campaign exposure, lies, deceit and deflections. The media is simply giving him hundreds of millions or billions of free, unrebutted air time.

The NYT editorial ends with this accurate characterization of the situation:

“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.”

Footnote:
1. Dark free speech: Constitutionally or legally protected (1) lies and deceit to distract, misinform, confuse, polarize and/or demoralize, (2) unwarranted opacity to hide inconvenient truths, facts and corruption (lies and deceit of omission), (3) unwarranted emotional manipulation (i) to obscure the truth and blind the mind to lies and deceit, and (ii) to provoke irrational, reason-killing emotions and feelings, including fear, hate, anger, disgust, distrust, intolerance, cynicism, pessimism and all kinds of bigotry including racism, and (4) ideologically-driven motivated reasoning and other ideologically-driven biases that unreasonably distort reality and reason. (my label, my definition)