This Just In — No, we can’t keep up. It’s too much. That, in part, is the goal. Flood the zone with trivial things, inflammatory things … so many things.
There’s a petty, extremely insecure man sitting in the Oval Office who is obsessed with making sure that your social media and news feeds feature his name in nearly every news story or online discussion.
If the news cycle lets up a little, he injects new and ever-more absurd things to re-enter that space. I’m sorry to acknowledge that just as was the case in 2016, the mainstream press is once again, addicted to this driver of clicks and viewership.
There’s no other explanation of headlines that tell us that the president is “considering a third term” or “pondering cancelling the midterm elections.” He can do neither, of course, and he knows that, but that’s not going to stop cable news talking heads from doing segments with Constitutional experts to confirm that very fact. All because he made a social media post to say he’s thinking about one thing.
Back in the covered wagon days of my youth as a journalist, we did a thing called “reporting” which involved checking stuff out and if it turned out that a red herring was at the end of our fishing line, there was no story. No editor would allow it. No paper would publish it. Period.
In those days, editors existed. Gatekeeping was a big part of the job both for reporters and management.
In the modern construction, what should be happening (but is not) is that the television networks should be denying the president access to their programs or live broadcast because he has proven exhaustively that he is a distributor of disinformation. Deliberately lying to the public, being found liable repeatedly for defaming people … these are not people to put on your platform as a news source. Ask Rupert Murdock.
It’s the narcissism that’s so hard to get past. Just one gut wrenching example came yesterday as we learned that the president called NBC’s Savannah Guthrie to tell her he would do everything possible via law enforcement to help them locate his missing mother.
He certainly was mostly concerned that this story was garnering a huge amount of media attention and he wanted to ensure that his name was attached to it. The FBI was already involved in this case. They had no need for presidential authority to do their job.
If he wanted to reach out on a personal level, he could do that. Such an expression of simple human decency requires no audience. That’s not the case here. He needed to be sure we all know that he made that phone call. No calls, however, to the hundreds of families attached to the innocent people his ICE raiders have snatched off the street and disappeared to concentration camps in other states to escape jurisdiction. Those are kidnappings, too.
Watch the video clip of the President and First Lady at the premier of her documentary. On the red carpet, you’ll see a teenager who cannot stand that his girlfriend is getting more attention than he is.
As CNN’s Kaitlin Collins, who has covered this president for a long time, asks for comment about the Epstein victims getting justice with the release of some of the files, the man baby behind the Resolute desk tries to dismiss her by saying she’d be much more attractive if she smiled more.
I appreciate Collins for not taking that bait and responding in kind with just some of the many available snarky comments about the president’s ridiculous hair or bloated ankles. Nope, she’s at work. She’s building the record to demonstrate that this guy won’t talk about hundreds of sex trafficking victims.
It’s a difficult time in journalism, but the job has never been more vital. We have to find a way to marginalize America’s number one source of disinformation and restore our trust in the fourth estate. It’s important.
Perhaps below the radar, but still in my heart (always) … Go Heels! Beat Dook!
Saturday, Chapel Hill. Popcorn. We need the relief.
Jean Bolduc is a freelance writer and the host of the Weekend Watercooler on 97.9 The Hill. She is the author of “African Americans of Durham & Orange Counties: An Oral History” (History Press, 2016) and has served on Orange County’s Human Relations Commission, The Alliance of AIDS Services-Carolina, the Orange County Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, and the Orange County Schools’ Equity Task Force. She was a featured columnist and reporter for the Chapel Hill Herald and the News & Observer.
Readers can reach Jean via email – jean@penandinc.com and via Twitter @JeanBolduc
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