President Trump’s latest speech is a greatest hits of election lies. Should journalists cover it?
President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)
The tweet of the day Wednesday might have been this one from Mother Jones editor-in-chief Clara Jeffery:
“Every day newsrooms wrestle with the ‘should we report this insane disinformation the president is spouting to millions or does any notice — even scathing notice — of it amplify, or does not debunking it make the disinfo more likely to spread …’”
That was sent out not long after President Donald Trump posted a 46-minute Facebook video that was essentially the greatest hits of Trump’s lies about the election. Trump started off by saying, “This may be the most important speech I’ve ever made.”
He then went on a rant that can be described as delusional. He posted a short clip of the speech on Twitter, which almost immediately labeled it with “This claim about election fraud is disputed.”
It was reported that Trump actually taped the speech last week. The New York Times’ Michael D. Shear wrote the video was “the in-person embodiment of Mr. Trump’s staccato tweets during the past three weeks: one falsehood after another about voting irregularities in swing states, Democratic conspiracies, attacks on state officials and signature verifications.”
Glenn Kessler, editor/chief writer of The Washington Post's Fact Checker, tweeted, “Lie after lie. All claims that have laughed out of court across the country.”
He also tweeted, “Every politician in the United States should be ashamed of Trump's 45-minute rant calling into question the very essence of US democracy.”
That brings us back to the struggle that newsrooms go through on stories such as this. On one hand, it’s more Trump lies about the election. It’s nothing new. It’s false. Why report on it?
Then again, it’s the sitting president saying things that millions will watch and believe — that our elections cannot be trusted. That charge does damage to our democracy and should not be ignored.
So what do you do?
Newsrooms try to straddle the line between reporting the news and not pumping oxygen into Trump’s baseless allegations. They mention it, but don’t dwell on it. For example, The New York Times did write about it, but you had to scroll down the homepage to find it.
It’s not an easy answer. Most responsible outlets seemed to do the right thing. Acknowledge it, but don’t spend a lot of energy on it. And spend most of that energy debunking it.
In other words, pay attention to it, but not enough to give it unnecessary credibility.
Where’s your mask?
A photo from October shows White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany with her husband Sean Gilmartin and daughter Blake. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)
Apparently, Wednesday was Bring Your Spouse to Work Day at the White House. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany’s husband Sean Gilmartin, a free agent baseball pitcher who was most recently in the Tampa Bay Rays organization, attended McEnany’s press conference and was involved in a controversy.
According to White House pool reporter Chris Johnson of the Washington Blade, after McEnany finished the conference, someone in attendance yelled out, “You crushed it, Kayleigh.” (Originally, it was thought that Gilmartin said it, but Johnson later said it was someone else.)
At that point, New York Times photographer Doug Mills saw Gilmartin and reminded him of the rules about wearing a mask in press areas. A White House staffer said incredulously, “Kayleigh’s husband?” As the staffer and Gilmartin exited together, Mills said it doesn’t matter who Gilmartin is, he is required to wear a mask.
Another embarrassing and unprofessional moment for the White House press secretary.
Cheap shot
MSNBC’s Brian Williams closed his show Tuesday night by airing a “Fox & Friends” clip in which co-host Steve Doocy quoted statistics that showed that counties in Kansas that enforced mask-wearing requirements did a better job at controlling the spread of COVID-19 than counties that didn’t enforce mask rules. Doocy then said, “Apparently, masks work.”
Williams then mockingly repeated Doocy’s comment, saying, “Apparently, masks work.” Then he added, “A breathtaking moment of situational awareness on live television this morning — 10 months, 270,000 lives into this.”
Williams later said, “It’s important to never forget who the deniers were because those 270,000 mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, husbands and wives — they ain’t coming back. So it’s incumbent upon all of us to honor their memory.”
Yes, we can go over all the times those on Fox News were irresponsible in their COVID-19 coverage by downplaying or dismissing the coronavirus. I’m not here to defend Fox News’s coronavirus coverage. But Williams’ holier-than-thou moment — punctuated by pulling on emotional strings by talking about sisters and brothers and so forth — came off as petulant and a bit of a cheap shot. Doocy was making the point that masks work. There is never a bad time to make that point.
Williams using his platform this way should be beneath him, especially because his show competes with Fox News and, in this case, Doocy and Fox News were sending out the right message.
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