The political press is taking the exact wrong approach to covering the Trump White House

[babylonsister]

The political press is taking the exact wrong approach to covering the Trump White House
They've not caught on to the way their tidy traditions have been weaponized against them.
Sam Fulwood III
May 9, 2018, 8:00 am


Could it be that we — and, by “we,” I mean those of us in all forms of the media — have taken the completely wrong approach to covering the Trump administration? Have we — reporters and editors, pundits and commentators, Tweeters and Instagrammers — made the critical mistake trying to fit our daily flood of exasperating news into the paradigms of yesteryear — those neat column inches and broadcast minutes — which once served us in the past?

I think so. And, in the process, we’ve failed to understand or properly communicate to the public what could be called Trump’s “big-picture strategy.”

Here’s the rub: According to Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University, there is none. “I think we should resist the term ‘strategy’ for Trump’s egotistic maneuvering,” Rosen wrote in a perceptive post for PressThink, a project of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at NYU. “There is no strategy.”

As Rosen described in a recent phone interview, instead of maintaining an overarching political strategy or policy agenda, Trump is engaged in a never-ending, loosely-associated series of fabricated grievances that track more with societal and cultural change than they do with actual policy or political concerns.

“A permanent culture war is really the meter and method of his presidency,” Rosen told me. “This culture war is the Republican Party now and that is what holds it together. That fact has been installed in the White House. That’s what motivates and animates Trump.”

If Rosen is as accurate as I believe him to be, it’s easy to understand why the media hasn’t caught on. Traditional and normative coverage of the White House is predicated on long-standing and historic practices, such as assuming that whoever is president attempts to speak for all Americans, doesn’t lie (well, not overtly or often), and responds to the centering gravitational pull of public morality and political opinion.

But this administration is neither traditional, nor normative. In fact, Trump eschews all that is rational about being president, drawing ever more personal popularity from his sycophants for being an outlier to Washington culture, especially as it’s reflected in the mainstream media.


more...

https://thinkprogress.org/media-covering-trump-white-house-wrong-170a61552bd1/

[PoorMonger]

1. This is true

Everyone falls into the trap of saying that Trump has some kind of plan or strategy that relies on distraction but it isn’t by design, it isn’t organized chaos. It is just the incompetence of an idiot who still refuses to learn anything on the job. It’s just like somebody said last night on The Last Word - he’s now pulled us out of the Iran deal because he and his base hate Obama... and they say they are going back to the highest level of sanctions, but they don’t even know what they mean by that. They just know it sounds tough.

I think the only thing he does with any consistent basis is trying to erase Obama - but that’s just driven by hatred and not with any ideas behind it that move beyond a big F you.

[Kilgore]

2. True, but article misses the real point

News outlets exist for the most part to make money.

Our population is fascinated with "pee pee and porn skank articles"

News outlets feed the need and make money and real news is rarely reported on.

In summary, we get what we want as a nation.