Tuesday, January 22, 2019

How The News Wants To Use You

There are few men in history that have seen their name in the news as much as Donald J. Trump has during his lifetime.

Trump has been a fairly constant newsmaker for over 40 years. He starting getting the attention of the media when he started to transform the Manhattan skyline. It continued with his ownership of the New Jersey Generals pro football team, his ownership of Trump Air, the development of his Atlantic City casinos and his highly successful Celebrity Apprentice tv show.

Mixed in with all of that was his highly public divorce from his first wife Ivana, his subsequent marriage and divorce with Marla Maples and his third marriage to Melania.

As they say in the newspaper business, Trump has always made good copy.

Here is an example from The New York Times on November 1, 1976 wherein it described the 30 year old real estate developer this way.

"He is tall, lean and blond, with dazzling white teeth, and he looks ever so much like Robert Redford. He rides around town in a chauffeured silver Cadillac with his initials, DJT, on the plates. He dates slinky fashion models, belongs to the most elegant clubs and, at only 30 years of age, estimates that he is worth 'more than $200 million'."
[The New York Times]

By and large, most of the news coverage of Trump for 40 years was positive. He was open and cooperative with the press and they generally treated him positively as well.

That continued through the Republican primaries. After all, Trump was great for their ratings and readership. Mass media gave Trump a billion dollars in free PR and he used it to roll over 16 other GOP primary challengers.

When Trump wrapped up the GOP nomination it all changed in an instant.

Trump was no longer someone they wanted to promote or publicize  He suddenly became a mortal threat to the liberal ideology that underlies most of mass media today. The mainstream media has made sure that it demeaned, diminished and delegitimized Trump every day since.

For example, here is an analysis by the Media Research Center of coverage of President Trump since he took office by the three major networks. That coverage has consistently been 90% negative for two years.




It is even more remarkable that 28% of all network evening news coverage in 2018 was dedicated to some aspect of the Trump presidency! It is almost as if there is no other news for them to cover.

More than one-half of that coverage involved just five topics.




You could argue that the coverage of the "investigations" is going to be inherently negative. However, there is also evidence of a lot of inherent liberal bias in the other three topics.

I am not aware of any President at any point in history who has had to put up with the animus and animosity that President Trump has had to endure from the media.

The major networks are not alone in the extent of coverage of Trump or its negativity.

I found this analysis of New York Times coverage of President Trump to be very interesting. It compares the amount of coverage the Times has given to Trump compared to other recent Presidents.

It is almost as if the New York Times has can find nothing else to report on. Of course, we know that  coverage is also overwhelmingly negative.




Jill Abamson, the former executive editor of the New York Times from 2011-2014 recently blasted the paper  for being "unmistakably anti-Trump."

Of course, it is not just liberal bias at work. It is also dollars and cents. Negative stories about Trump are like red meat to the Times' readers who wake up every morning hoping that Trump will be impeached that day.

The Times, Abramson said, has reason to be critical of Trump, considering they got a “Trump bump” during the first six months of the administration that saw digital subscriptions increase by 600,000 to more than 2 million.
“Given its mostly liberal audience, there was an implicit financial reward for the Times in running lots of Trump stories, almost all of them negative: they drove big traffic numbers and, despite the blip of cancellations after the election, inflated subscription orders to levels no one anticipated,” Abramson writes.

I have written before that it is nothing short of miraculous that Trump's approval rating is as high as it is considering the media onslaught he has had to withstand over the last two years.

At their core, most people detest political drama. They don't like bickering, backbiting and blabbering. Give them something calming rather than chaotic. A steady diet of drama takes a toll on voters. It wears people out. Their natural reaction is to react negatively to it.

Political drama that is amplified by a constant drumbeat by the media makes it even worse. The drumbeat of repetition engages the "illusory truth effect" in humans. Simply stated, the more often we hear something the more likely we are to believe that it is true---even if it is a complete fabrication.

One of the key principles in any successful attempt to influence is lots of repetition by repeating your points over and over again to engage the "illusory truth effect".

Repetition is the first lesson of propaganda.

The second lesson is that it is easier to change groups of people than individuals. Most people look to others for cues to their behavior. Most people are conformists within a crowd. It is hard to go against the flow.

The objective of the mainstream media (and the Democrats) is to play to the psychology of crowds. Make it seem that there is nothing positive about anything Trump does. Make it appear that everyone who is anyone is opposed to him. Make it so that individuals who voted for Trump will feel more and more uncomfortable when faced with what appears to be the obvious fact that everyone else is opposed to him.

You see that play out every day in the coverage of the government shutdown. It is all Trump's fault. He is stubborn and hard-headed. He refuses to compromise.

All of this has taken a toll on Trump's approval rating. His approval rating with Rasmussen is down to 44%. In early December, before the shutdown was being discussed in the media, he was at 50%. More significantly, those who strongly disapprove of Trump has risen from 40% to 48%. Those who strongly approve has fallen from 36% to 32%.

I have to believe that Trump understands his Presidency is at stake in how this government shutdown ends. He simply cannot cave on his demand for the wall. It was his central campaign promise. If he does not deliver on that pledge he will lose most of his base. It is that simple.

Without that core support he will not win re-election. Without that core support he may not be able to serve out his term. Articles of impeachment are hard to fight when your approval rating is below 30%. The stakes are very, very big for Trump.

The Democrats also know this. That is why they are just as adamant to not give an inch to Trump. They also know they can rely on the media to portray Trump as the bad guy.

In that Trump has given about as much as he can in compromise and maintain the support of his base, I only see two options going forward to end the shutdown.

Congress passes a bill to fund the government without the wall and sends it to Trump. He vetoes it and forces Congress to override the veto with 2/3 votes in each House. This would be a very perilous vote for GOP members. If the veto is overridden Trump simply blames Congress and the Washington establishment for ignoring border security. He proves that he will not sell out for politics.

Alternatively, Trump declares an emergency and uses Defense Department funds and the Corps of Engineers to build the wall. He then agrees to end the government shutdown.

No matter what happens, Trump will continue to be in the center of the news.

That you can count on. There is over 42 years of history that proves it.

You can also count on the fact that the "News" will continue to try to use you to drive Trump from office.

Don't be misled. Do any of the charts above suggest a fair and balanced mainstream media?

No comments:

Post a Comment