John,
Donald Trump is masterful at exploiting the mainstream media’s flaws to spread conspiracy theories, lies, and hate.
Of those flaws, the media’s commitment to telling “both sides” of a political story has been the easiest to exploit. Trump won the White House in 2016 by spreading endless lies about Hillary Clinton, knowing full well that the media would take the bait.
This week, Trump and President Biden held dueling events in Michigan — ostensibly in support of striking UAW autoworkers.
President Biden became the first president to picket alongside striking workers. Meanwhile, Trump staged a sham photo op at a nonunion factory, giving a campaign speech filled with lies and hallucinations about his previous record of supporting workers.
The truth, of course is that Donald Trump’s administration was one of the most hostile to unions in our nation’s history. Under the Trump administration, auto manufacturing jobs fell. Trump once proposed gutting the auto industry in Michigan and moving the jobs to states where workers aren’t paid a fair wage.
So how did mainstream outlets do in covering Trump’s speech, John? Spoiler alert: not good!
Rather than calling out Trump’s blatant lies and history of hostility towards Michigan’s workforce, the mainstream media focused on the so-called “horse race,” framing the dueling campaign stops as a contest to win working-class voters in Michigan.
On the other hand, here’s what coverage looked like in our Michigan newsroom, The Gander:
At Courier, our network of local newsrooms nationwide is dedicated to telling audiences the whole truth, no matter what. We will never compromise our values or back down from right-wing efforts to use the media to spread lies and hate.
But to continue doing this important work, we’ll need to continue to amass the resources necessary to counter right-wing misinformation campaigns and the bad actors who knowingly spread them.
In solidarity,
Courier Newsroom
