I don’t think the call was to let the Trump list of “under-covered” terrorist attacks stand without comment or challenge. It was more along the lines of ‘be aware you’re being played if you respond by showing long segments of your coverage of those terrorist attacks.’
Some of the cable news responses I’ve seen involve not just showing brief clips of their correspondents covering those attacks, but also information (bar graphs and such) on the likelihood the average American has of being killed by lightning, shark attack, or falling cocoanut–all being much greater than is the chance of being killed by a Muslim-extremist terrorist attack.
That sort of coverage points out and counters the Trump attempt to lie and mislead, while declining to play Trump’s (or Bannon’s ) ugly game of 'make people associate Islam with Terrorism."
Trump’s supposed political brilliance seems to me to be more like an idiot-savant. He is basically very good at appealing to people who have the same lack of critical thinking skills, simplistic and conspiratorial view of the world that he has. I don’t find that incredibly brilliant, although I suppose it does have its advantages.
Tape delay anything by the administration, only broadcasting after scrolling fact checking is added. Give the administration a chance to respond and correct before broadcasting…but, the American public, and the world, deserves the full and unblemished truth in all statements from the White House and both sides of congress. Don’t they?
This short RAND paper (PDF) on modern Russian propaganda may be of some interest, since it’s superficially similar to team Trump’s approach. It agrees that simply refuting lies point by point may not be particularly effective.
Bolding mine.
They recommend using your own firehose to push the audience where you want them to go, instead of trying to use it to stop the other firehose directly. So instead of focusing on specific points, focus on overall messages or counter-narratives. If Russia is trying to destroy NATO, then instead of putting their messages under a microscope just put forward pro-NATO propaganda.
This is already happening with Trump, to a certain extent. Witness all the pro-immigrant/diversity commercials at the Super Bowl. One problem I see is that Trump and friends have the advantage of being the ones who can choose the subject and initiate, whereas the opposition has to react. First impressions can have a powerful anchoring effect.
The press/media here could, if they wanted to badly enough, filter the pronouncements of the Thrumpers in a way to neutralize the propaganda and outright lies.
I happened to have to watch a channel, Foxnews, while at the YMCA yesterday and was pleasantly surprised to hear some forthright criticism of Thrumpers from the hosts. I think almost everyone is onboard with the narrative that the WH is pretty clumsy right now, and Thrump isn’t making it easier nor is he even trying to help.
Have any of the outlets or networks tried tape delay with fact finding subtitles? Not just a rebroadcast or rehash, but actual refusal to release WH statements and Republican leader statements without vetting them?
Thrump’s tweets only reach the vast majority of Americans because the media chooses to report them and then, generally, they do it with fact checking. This helps.
The reason WHY we have this particular group of insane pseudo-Republicans working to destroy America right now, is directly because the response to their three-decade long litany of lies and false rewrites of history, were only answered occasionally, with minor corrections.
There is a fairly simple way that lies work: say them often enough, firmly enough, loud enough, and ignore anyone trying to correct them, and large numbers of people will be persuaded by the QUANTITY of lies alone.
I think there comes a point when people demonize someone they hate so much they lose sight of reality. I don’t think Trump is an evil genius, but I don’t think he is stupid either, It’s like when the whole birther thing happened. I don’t believe for a second that Trump actually believed what he was saying but he wanted his name thrown back out there in the news, I think to kind of dip his toes into the political waters and see if it felt good and to get loony birther conspiracy types on his side.
Or the recent immigration ban thing when the federal judge wanted to block it, Trump has already sort of reframed things so that if there is a terrorist attack he can turn around and heap the blame on the judicial types. Most people consider Barack Obama a pretty smart guy, and even he said not to underestimate Trump. So three-dimensional chess player? No, but a savvy manipulator of the media? Definitely.
Fact checking serves only to convince the Trump true believers that the media is against him, and by extension, themselves.
It is no accident that Trump has great support amongst the religious crowd. They learn from childhood that the way to determine if something is true is not to consider evidence, but to notice how believing it makes them feel. Then they learn that if you believe something enough, that makes it true…and ignoring evidence is the perfect way to demonstrate the depth of your belief. They also learn from childhood that people like us are blessed, and people unlike us are cursed.
When confronted by facts, their go-to response is “But I believe…”. They honestly think that what they believe has a causal effect on what the truth is.
This is the basis of Trumps support. Make them feel good about themselves, give them an “other” to blame their troubles on. Tell them they are smart. Tell them you are the only one they can trust.
Indeed, some of the Trumpistas are lost to reason.
But the main problem with the last election was the number of people who didn’t think it was worth getting off their asses to vote. (Yes, voting was made harder in too many places–but* most* non-voters had no excuse.)
We’re trying to convince the marginally sane that Trump is a lying fool. (Or merely parroting what Wormtongue just told him.) And we’re letting the Republican Congress know that we’re on to their useful idiot.
Bannon told the media to shut up. They’d better not…
No one has taken up the mantra of “fake news” more than Trump and his administration. It makes Clinton’s “vast right-wing conspiracy” look quaint by comparison.
Well, large sections of the media are indeed against him, so you need to avoid that angle. Indeed, just don’t mention the press at all. How about using a line like, “I can’t find anything to back that up; can you point me in the right direction?” Get them to do the work for you and maybe they’ll realise how wrong they are.
“…the way to determine if something is true is not to consider evidence, but to notice how believing it makes them feel…” --that’s an admirably clear observation on the way many Trump voters think.
Which makes it even more tragic that the GOP Congress ushered public-education foe DeVos into the Cabinet. Public schools were the last hope of countering the ‘don’t look at evidence’ mindset.
Reporting live from my Facebook feed, I can tell you that fact-checking Trump is important, serious, and usually thankless business. At the same time, fact-checkers need to choose their battles wisely. I’m not convinced that heckling Trump’s crowd size was more important than covering everything else that happened in that first week.
You guys have probably all seen this, but I thought it was relevant. It’s John Olivers Truth verse Trump. It talks about how we got to this point with Trump, where his lies come from, why do so many people believe what are obviously lies and what do we do about this (which is the theme of this thread). Yes, it’s comedy but like all John Oliver shows he mixes in some facts with the comedy. If you haven’t seen it I highly recommend watching it through.
I don’t think education, or lack of it, is the real issue here. I think the problem lies more with a “Go with your feelings!” attitude that Hollywood, popular culture, Oprah-like folks and gossipers and society have been promoting in America for decades. Go with your heart, not your head; go with what feels right, go with what feels good, it’s all about the feels, man! You can’t have a society that promotes this “Feelings matter more than facts” attitude for decades, combined with ivory-tower “Morality and truth are relative” solipsism philosophy and not eventually have it come back to bite you, in the form of people spurning facts in favor of a narrative that they like.
I think the right path is to make the point that Trump simply doesn’t give a shit whether what he says is true or not.
Then back it up with detail as needed. Which means that the fact-checking still has to be done.
IOW, the first thing to say is what the forest looks like, and then back it up with our knowledge of the trees.
I’m sure the MSM will fall into the trap of looking at each tree as it comes up. That’s how they roll. But there’s not a damned thing I can do about that; I don’t own a major newspaper. I can only control what I do.