This is the eleventh post in a series about the ways that people online blame the media for society’s ills. The title derives from an old expression, “Don’t shoot the messenger.” The first post appeared on 24 August 2019 but there was an earlier post on 18 February of that year titled ‘Don’t shoot the piano player’.
Times shown in this post are Australian Standard Daylight Time except after 6 October 2019 and before 5 April 2020 when they are Australian Eastern Daylight Time. Most of what follows is about US President Donald Trump, so if you’re allergic to such commentary maybe skip this post. I’ll start on 28 August when on Twitter New York University’s Jay Rosen commented at 8.38am, “You know that thing where Trump gets rewarded with media attention for doing something stupid, racist, tradition-busting, or outrageous? I wrote a thread about the options journalists have when they feel caught up in that kind of cycle.”
Rosen’s tweet pointed to one from 12.57am on 19 August put up by Julia Ioffe of GQ Magazine, who said, “This is the fundamental problem of Trump: he provokes by saying horrific things that cannot go unchallenged, but in challenging them, you rev up him and his base to double down in delight (and sincere belief) and horrify you more, which means you have to challenge it again, etc.”
This problem had appeared in the Australian context prior to the May election when Fraser Anning, a right-wing populist, was trying to generate support in the community by saying things that reminded people (everyone; although he denied it, saying that that outrage was a media beat-up) of the Nazis. But Anning was not reelected to the Senate in May last year, so he no longer offers a dilemma to journalists working in Australia.
For American journalists Trump will, however, continue to do so. He was (unsurprisingly) back in the headlines on 26 September when at 6.45am the account of MSNBC, a US media organisation, tweeted, “.@NicolleDWallace cuts away from President Trump's news conference: ‘We hate to do this, but the president isn't telling the truth ... what Trump appears to be trying to do is to turn his own impeachment into a big deflection.’” The tweet came with a video. In response to this, at 4.53pm on the same day Amy Remeikis, a Guardian Australia journalist, tweeted, “Cutting away from a press conference because the leader isn’t telling the truth - and then debunking it in real time.” Then, at 6.20pm on the same day Paul Bongiorno, a columnist with the progressive Australian news outlet The Saturday paper, tweeted, “will Australian networks be game enough to do this? There is plenty to fact check. We are drowning in a sea of bull shit [sic].”
On 27 September at 7.07am David Corn, a US journalist who is the Washington, DC, bureau chief of the news outlet Mother Jones, tweeted, “My latest: Trump's intelligence chief offers a timely reminder: Trump is a liar. Don't let this slip by. Please read, RT, and share.” In response, Mehdi Hasan, a columnist of US media outlet The Intercept, tweeted, “This is a key point but will be forgotten fast: if, say, Obama's own intelligence chief had gone to Congress & basically said Obama is lying, it would have been a huge story. But Trump, as ever, produces so many controversies, that most don't get proper attention. Frustrating.” Corn responded to this, perhaps unfairly, with some sarcasm, “I wish I had time to read your tweet, @mehdirhasan. I am sure you are making an intelligent point. Gotta run.....”
Rosen reappeared in my timeline on 27 September at 8.42am when he tweeted, “Treat it as a hypothetical. Suppose one party — far more than the other — begins to rely on fictions and conspiracy theory to hold itself together and project normalcy. Can a news organization dedicated to both impartiality and factuality cope? In theory, yes. In practice, nope.”
Then on 7 October at 12.18pm Rosen tweeted, “’He's destroyed the information space, so everyone thinks it's just us vs. them.’ Philosopher @jasonintrator Jason Stanley, author of 'How Propaganda Works,' on CNN. This is why the problem goes way beyond ‘how to cover’ the president.” The tweet came with a link to a CNN video in which Stanley answered questions put to him by a CNN anchor. CNN is a US cable news channel. Trump uses “bald-faced lying”, Stanley said, so the situation now is different from how it had been in the past, when administrations had lied but the truth was still important. Now it isn’t. The president knows what he says it untrue, Stanley went on. It’s just “us vs them” now. “It’s about winning and losing,” he said, “It’s not about the truth.” He talked about the “division of the information space”. “The information space is corrupted,” Stanley said. “The president has destroyed the information space.”
How to counter this tendency? the anchor asked. “We have to return to what’s true and what’s not.” Focusing on the facts, not a horse race (a term Rosen uses often but which Stanley didn’t use). “Not us vs them.” He said that totalitarian regimes like spectacle, where politics is like a game.
Three days later, on 10 October at 8.03am a US account named Bill Maxwell with over 59,000 followers tweeted about some more weirdness from the Orange Liability:
It was other politicians, too, not just Trump. So, for example, Jonathan Groves, a retired academic and former editor with 2141 followers, tweeted on 3 October at 8.22am, “The era of the live interview should end. @NPR just granted a politician five full minutes to misrepresent what’s in the White House call log.” “NPR” is a US non-profit news outlet. Groves’ tweet came with a link to a podcast titled, “Republican Rep. Jim Banks Discusses The Latest Impeachment Inquiry Developments.” Jim Banks was at the time a member of the lower house of the US Congress representing an Indiana electorate.
“Texas lieutenant governor Dan Patrick earlier called on Americans to sacrifice their lives, telling Fox News that grandparents across the country should be proud to die from the coronavirus if it meant the younger generations could get back to work,” tweeted Australian Dave Ewart at 12.03pm on 18 April this year. It seems as though the contagion wasn’t just one infecting the lungs, but also the mind, possibly inciting Trump in return to call on the citizens of some states, during the Covid-19 crisis, to arm themselves and rise up violently against their elected representatives.
But it wasn’t just in the US that people were getting frustrated with the kind of rhetoric that is strong on surface and weak on content. On 1 October at 4.17am Guardian columnist and left-wing activist George Monbiot had tweeted, “Can we please stop calling them ‘populists’? It creates an association with popularity, and suggests they are closer to the people than other politicians. Let's call people like Trump, Johnson, Modi, Morrison, Bolsnaro, Duterte and Orban what they are: Demagogues.” Morrison is the prime minister of Australia, Modi is the president of India, Bolsonaro is the president of Brazil, Duterte is the president of the Philippines, and Orban is the president of Hungary. Boris Johnson (the UK prime minister) shouldn’t need any introduction from me.
And journalists were sometimes the butt of comments from people in the community. For example, on 7 October at 1.07pm Jay Van Bavel, a social neuroscience professor at New York University, tweeted, “I’m so tired of watching partisan hacks argue with one another on political talk shows—I hear so many logical errors, lies and conspiracy theories. I’d vastly prefer a show with a historian, political scientist and legal scholar who slowly explain what’s happening.” A call from the bleachers for an expert rather than a politician – but where does the amateur end and the professional start? Who is to decide if not the voter?
Times shown in this post are Australian Standard Daylight Time except after 6 October 2019 and before 5 April 2020 when they are Australian Eastern Daylight Time. Most of what follows is about US President Donald Trump, so if you’re allergic to such commentary maybe skip this post. I’ll start on 28 August when on Twitter New York University’s Jay Rosen commented at 8.38am, “You know that thing where Trump gets rewarded with media attention for doing something stupid, racist, tradition-busting, or outrageous? I wrote a thread about the options journalists have when they feel caught up in that kind of cycle.”
Rosen’s tweet pointed to one from 12.57am on 19 August put up by Julia Ioffe of GQ Magazine, who said, “This is the fundamental problem of Trump: he provokes by saying horrific things that cannot go unchallenged, but in challenging them, you rev up him and his base to double down in delight (and sincere belief) and horrify you more, which means you have to challenge it again, etc.”
This problem had appeared in the Australian context prior to the May election when Fraser Anning, a right-wing populist, was trying to generate support in the community by saying things that reminded people (everyone; although he denied it, saying that that outrage was a media beat-up) of the Nazis. But Anning was not reelected to the Senate in May last year, so he no longer offers a dilemma to journalists working in Australia.
For American journalists Trump will, however, continue to do so. He was (unsurprisingly) back in the headlines on 26 September when at 6.45am the account of MSNBC, a US media organisation, tweeted, “.@NicolleDWallace cuts away from President Trump's news conference: ‘We hate to do this, but the president isn't telling the truth ... what Trump appears to be trying to do is to turn his own impeachment into a big deflection.’” The tweet came with a video. In response to this, at 4.53pm on the same day Amy Remeikis, a Guardian Australia journalist, tweeted, “Cutting away from a press conference because the leader isn’t telling the truth - and then debunking it in real time.” Then, at 6.20pm on the same day Paul Bongiorno, a columnist with the progressive Australian news outlet The Saturday paper, tweeted, “will Australian networks be game enough to do this? There is plenty to fact check. We are drowning in a sea of bull shit [sic].”
On 27 September at 7.07am David Corn, a US journalist who is the Washington, DC, bureau chief of the news outlet Mother Jones, tweeted, “My latest: Trump's intelligence chief offers a timely reminder: Trump is a liar. Don't let this slip by. Please read, RT, and share.” In response, Mehdi Hasan, a columnist of US media outlet The Intercept, tweeted, “This is a key point but will be forgotten fast: if, say, Obama's own intelligence chief had gone to Congress & basically said Obama is lying, it would have been a huge story. But Trump, as ever, produces so many controversies, that most don't get proper attention. Frustrating.” Corn responded to this, perhaps unfairly, with some sarcasm, “I wish I had time to read your tweet, @mehdirhasan. I am sure you are making an intelligent point. Gotta run.....”
Rosen reappeared in my timeline on 27 September at 8.42am when he tweeted, “Treat it as a hypothetical. Suppose one party — far more than the other — begins to rely on fictions and conspiracy theory to hold itself together and project normalcy. Can a news organization dedicated to both impartiality and factuality cope? In theory, yes. In practice, nope.”
Then on 7 October at 12.18pm Rosen tweeted, “’He's destroyed the information space, so everyone thinks it's just us vs. them.’ Philosopher @jasonintrator Jason Stanley, author of 'How Propaganda Works,' on CNN. This is why the problem goes way beyond ‘how to cover’ the president.” The tweet came with a link to a CNN video in which Stanley answered questions put to him by a CNN anchor. CNN is a US cable news channel. Trump uses “bald-faced lying”, Stanley said, so the situation now is different from how it had been in the past, when administrations had lied but the truth was still important. Now it isn’t. The president knows what he says it untrue, Stanley went on. It’s just “us vs them” now. “It’s about winning and losing,” he said, “It’s not about the truth.” He talked about the “division of the information space”. “The information space is corrupted,” Stanley said. “The president has destroyed the information space.”
How to counter this tendency? the anchor asked. “We have to return to what’s true and what’s not.” Focusing on the facts, not a horse race (a term Rosen uses often but which Stanley didn’t use). “Not us vs them.” He said that totalitarian regimes like spectacle, where politics is like a game.
Three days later, on 10 October at 8.03am a US account named Bill Maxwell with over 59,000 followers tweeted about some more weirdness from the Orange Liability:
Holy shit!
Trump on the Kurds:
"They didn't help us in the Second World War, they didn't help us with Normandy." He says they're only interested in fighting for "their land."
Trump suggests he has no problem with Erdogan being "tough" on the Kurds.At 9.10am on 19 April this year, author and media analyst Thomas Baekdal tweeted, “Newspapers, you seriously need to stop reporting from Trump's press conferences. This is no longer about making people informed. This is Trump having a very specific political agenda to misinformed and to confuse people, and using us in the press to spread it.”
It was other politicians, too, not just Trump. So, for example, Jonathan Groves, a retired academic and former editor with 2141 followers, tweeted on 3 October at 8.22am, “The era of the live interview should end. @NPR just granted a politician five full minutes to misrepresent what’s in the White House call log.” “NPR” is a US non-profit news outlet. Groves’ tweet came with a link to a podcast titled, “Republican Rep. Jim Banks Discusses The Latest Impeachment Inquiry Developments.” Jim Banks was at the time a member of the lower house of the US Congress representing an Indiana electorate.
“Texas lieutenant governor Dan Patrick earlier called on Americans to sacrifice their lives, telling Fox News that grandparents across the country should be proud to die from the coronavirus if it meant the younger generations could get back to work,” tweeted Australian Dave Ewart at 12.03pm on 18 April this year. It seems as though the contagion wasn’t just one infecting the lungs, but also the mind, possibly inciting Trump in return to call on the citizens of some states, during the Covid-19 crisis, to arm themselves and rise up violently against their elected representatives.
But it wasn’t just in the US that people were getting frustrated with the kind of rhetoric that is strong on surface and weak on content. On 1 October at 4.17am Guardian columnist and left-wing activist George Monbiot had tweeted, “Can we please stop calling them ‘populists’? It creates an association with popularity, and suggests they are closer to the people than other politicians. Let's call people like Trump, Johnson, Modi, Morrison, Bolsnaro, Duterte and Orban what they are: Demagogues.” Morrison is the prime minister of Australia, Modi is the president of India, Bolsonaro is the president of Brazil, Duterte is the president of the Philippines, and Orban is the president of Hungary. Boris Johnson (the UK prime minister) shouldn’t need any introduction from me.
And journalists were sometimes the butt of comments from people in the community. For example, on 7 October at 1.07pm Jay Van Bavel, a social neuroscience professor at New York University, tweeted, “I’m so tired of watching partisan hacks argue with one another on political talk shows—I hear so many logical errors, lies and conspiracy theories. I’d vastly prefer a show with a historian, political scientist and legal scholar who slowly explain what’s happening.” A call from the bleachers for an expert rather than a politician – but where does the amateur end and the professional start? Who is to decide if not the voter?
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