I had to do a double-take when I saw this news item. First came the headline, “Pence won’t let public health officials appear on CNN unless Trump’s disinfo briefings run in full”. I thought, this is horrible: the administration is holding Fauci and Birx hostage to force CNN to cover not only them but also Trump in his daily blatherings. But no, it was exactly the other way around. Pence was keeping them from being interviewed on CNN unless the network also covered their regular briefings. What CNN has been doing instead is broadcasting the Trump portion and then cutting away when people who actually have something to say step forward.
Bad enough that Trump has a high profile daily outlet for his ravings; it’s incredible the media would treat this as news and CDC updates as disposable filler. I guess they think they are doing the guy a favor by giving him free media so he doesn’t have to buy as much.
This has been a peeve of mine for some time; see here and here. We expect Fox to offer itself as a mouthpiece for Trump, but why should the self-designated “enlightened” wing of journalism be just as craven? Yes, the owners care more about ratings than the political consequences of their coverage, but why do working journalists go along without a peep? What would it take to get through to them?
I stopped watching CNN. They provide non-stop coverage of how bad Trump is doing. I think they made a business decision to be anti-Trump because they get viewership by doing so. But they miss a lot of other things that are worth covering.
Arne,
Can you give me a list of the good things trump has done?
Hardly. But my point is not that their coverage is unbalanced with respect to whether anything he has done is good, it is that I don’t want to spend my hour of watching news only hearing about Trump.
On that we agree. I see no point to covering his press conferences, but I think it is not a factor in the election.
There is no Dem voter that is going to vote for Trump in any event, and his almost criminal response to the virus is more reason to vote Dem.
Unfortunately, there is no trump voter that is not going to vote for him. Of that group probably 30% realizes his response has been horrible. Won’t change their vote though.
His presence on the tube matters not.
Reports say that plenty of people who voted for Obama chose to vote for Trump. I think you vastly underestimate the number of people who have been convinced that the far right and far left hold control of both parties – people who are therefore conflicted about how to vote.
Perhaps I should rather observe that people are conflicted about whether their votes matter and end up deciding not to vote.
Arne,
I believe those reports about supposed Obama/Trump voters are absolutely ridiculous. Changes in turnout was the key, and affected county level voting.
I have met many weird people in my life. But I never in my life (fortunately) met anyone so weird to vote for a black man and then a racist.
Quite frankly, I think many trump voters said they voted for Obama and then trump as a way of claiming “I’m not a racist”.
People can be stupid without being racist