As readers of this blog know, I was a journalist for 13
years and worked with journalists as
a public relations practitioner for another 20 or more, so I have some knowledge
of the profession. It’s my opinion that after 4+ years of the Trump
administration, including the campaign, reporters still do not ask the
questions that need to be asked to truly inform the American people.
Here are some recent examples:
* In a press briefing yesterday, the president suggested that
people might ingest disinfectants such as Lysol or bleach to kill the
coronavirus from inside their bodies. He tried to get one of his medical
experts, Dr. Deborah Birx, to back him up. When she hedged by saying it was “not
a treatment,” someone in the media gallery should have asked her these
follow-up questions: “Dr. Birx, why don’t you tell the American people who are
watching right now on television that drinking or injecting disinfectant would most
likely kill them, and that some people use this kind of chemical to commit
suicide? Why don’t you tell them that before someone goes out and tries it?”
* Or, here’s a good one. Trump had previously suggested that
the virus would magically disappear when the weather got warm, and he re-emphasized
that belief yesterday. So here’s the correct follow-up question: “Mr.
President, isn’t it warm in Florida right now, and yet the virus continues to
infect and kill people? What about Singapore? Or countries south of the
equator? The virus is killing people in every country on earth, some of which
are very hot. They are certainly warmer than, say, Minnesota right now, so why
doesn’t your theory apply to warm weather countries?”
* Another reporter, Philip Rucker of the Washington Post,
asked Trump why he was spreading rumors instead of using the briefings to
present information, guidance and facts. Trump replied with, “Hey Phil, I'm the
president and you're fake news.” He went on to call Rucker “a total faker.” So
the follow-up question should have been this: “Mr. President, you’ve been
standing up there for two hours a day every day for a month now, offering fake
forecasts and fake numbers and fake treatments and fake cures and misleading
people into thinking a vaccine is almost ready and pushing medications that are
untested and have been shown to kill certain patients and urging governors to
reopen their states and then criticizing them after they do, and yet you have the
balls to stand behind that podium and call me a ‘total faker’? You’re the one
who’s a faker, Mr. President, and everybody in this room knows it. In fact, the
reporters may be the only people in this room who are NOT fake.”
All of that happened in just one day. I could find dozens more
examples of the press letting Trump off the hook for lies, half-truths, conspiracy
theories, Fox News talking points, rumors and innuendos that go unchallenged
during these press briefings, cabinet room interviews and those press gaggles
in the back driveway of the White House, but I think I’d be preaching to the
choir and besides, you’ve heard it all before.
Now I realize that any time Trump speaks, in any context and
any medium, the talking heads on CNN and MSNBC (and the responsible print media) are eager to dissect his words
and fact check his statements after the fact, and then talk about it all night long, but the people who need to hear
those pronouncements aren’t watching the liberal talk shows that follow a Trump
briefing so they never hear about the lies and misinformation. They need to hear it during the briefings, which many people do watch, but the questions aren’t being
put to the president during real time. Also, those same people are most likely getting their
post-briefing analysis from Fox News, which has helped to create the alternate
universe in which this president and his administration exist.
I could write another thousand words or more on this
subject, but I want to wrap it up with one more question that I think someone
needs to ask. When Trump goes off on a rant about ingesting Lysol or shining a light
inside the human body or windmills causing cancer or America “shooting down”
Iranian boats or how the airports were captured during the Revolutionary War or
how water comes down wet and is called rain or how he is a stable genius with a
very good brain—and on and on—somebody has to stand up and say, “Excuse me, Mr.
President, but are you insane?”
And with that, the entire press corps should get up and file
quickly out of the room.
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