"The media are aware of the manipulation": Countering Trump's spectacle begins with a press strategy

[marmar]

"The media are aware of the manipulation": Countering Trump's spectacle begins with a press strategy
When media carry this real oppression and suffering as programming, it trivializes the harm that is being done

By Chauncey DeVega
Senior Writer
Published February 24, 2025 5:49AM (EST)


(Salon) As cultural critic and educator Neil Postman famously warned forty years ago, the American people were and are amusing themselves to death. The Age of Trump and the country’s rapid collapse into autocracy and authoritarianism are proof in the extreme of Postman’s hypothesis.

Trump again confirmed his contempt for American democracy when he declared recently that "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law." This is the statement of a president who believes that he is above the law and is a type of Caesar, king, emperor, Napoleon…. or worse. Trump also signed an executive order that states that he and his attorney general have the final say about the law in the United States. This is blatantly unconstitutional. The courts, and not the executive branch, have the final say about the law in this country. Not to be outdone, Trump then posted an image of himself on his Truth Social site depicted as a king wearing a crown and robes. Trump wrote the following caption, “LONG LIVE THE KING!” The New York Times reports that “The White House then reinforced the message, recirculating it on Instagram and X with an illustration of Mr. Trump wearing a crown on a magazine cover resembling Time, but called Trump.”

....(snip)....

In an attempt to help the American people better navigate and make sense of Trump’s surreal and unprecedented first weeks back in power, the relationship between Trump’s ability to manipulate the media, his rapidly escalating authoritarian behavior and what must be done to resist the Age of Trump and its assaults on reality, I recently spoke with David Altheide. He is the Regents' Professor Emeritus on the faculty of Justice and Social Inquiry in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University and author of the book "Gonzo Governance: The Media Logic of Donald Trump."

....(snip)....

Trump recently declared himself, again, a type of king of Caesar or worse. Trump's tsunami of aberrant and dangerous and unprecedented behavior continues and is speeding up. Will this ever stop?

..... The media are complicit in this process. Take television news as an example. Donald Trump’s attack is working because he oversees setting the agenda. Journalists are constrained by network news formats of presenting reports in short, visual, dramatic, and often conflict-centered reports. Generally, the media deal with this onslaught one event at a time rather than giving viewers and readers a coherent big picture. Rarely—except with major catastrophes—do the networks break format. Ultimately, the strategy works to keep control of the narrative by getting others to react to the plan, rather than attacking it and changing the storyline altogether. The journalists committed to democracy must take back control of the narrative. One way to do this is to is to see what is happening as a massive natural disaster. Journalism and responsible media must state that the United States is under attack and that the Trump regime is destroying the American government and damaging citizens. This could be set forth in in a series of longer special reports on what is being damaged and what this means for U. S. citizens. Just a sample includes veterans’ health care, scientific and medical research, family and children’s health, well-being and education and the environment and climate change. And let’s not forget about the sledgehammer being taken to our foreign policy and alliances with allies. ...............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/02/24/the-media-are-aware-of-the-manipulation-countering-spectacle-begins-with-a-press-strategy/

[UpInArms]

1. The media better get on the stick

Or this plane is going to crash.

[RockRaven]

2. "Aware of..." Well, yeah, that tends to be the case with co-conspirators and

business partners and the like.