With their cards on the table like this, can we really still call them ‘news’ at this point?
The President — who had long been jeered by the media for failing to speak to the press enough — is now standing on camera every day for an hour or more answering direct questions about the most important question facing the country.
Was that enough to make them happy?
Of course not. This is the press we’re talking about.
They did what they always do — they just moved the goalposts.
Hard-left website Daily Beast explains it this way:
The nation’s television news outlets, especially the three major cable-news networks, are grappling with a nagging paradox as President Donald Trump continues to orchestrate his White House briefings on the novel coronavirus pandemic.
On the one hand, their ratings have never been higher, and viewers’ appetites for the live sessions have shown no signs of dwindling. On the other hand, journalists and executives at MSNBC, CNN and the often Trump-friendly Fox News—which scored an impressive 6.2 million viewers for Sunday’s installment of the Trump show, according to Nielsen—are increasingly facing the likelihood that they are becoming an uncritical and unvetted transmission belt for propaganda and misinformation.
“These White House sessions—ostensibly meant to give the public critical and truthful information about this frightening crisis—are in fact working against that end,” wrote Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan, summarizing such concerns. “Rather, they have become a daily stage for Trump to play his greatest hits to captive audience members. They come in search of life-or-death information, but here’s what they get from him instead: Self-aggrandizement… Media-bashing… Exaggeration and outright lies.” — Source: DailyBeast
Their editor-in-chief tweeted:
Top MSNBC talking head piled on…
"During these briefings, Trump has lied that the virus is 'something that we have tremendous control over'."
"He has promoted an unproven drug treatment."
"He is spreading misinformation that could actually put people’s lives in danger."https://t.co/mRyZwodeHL
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) March 24, 2020
That’s really ironic, considering how many bogus stories and claims the ‘mainstream media’ have had to walk back even just since the beginning of this crisis.
Hugh Hewitt’s response is one of many summing up the opinions from the Right…
What could POSSIBLY be driving this response?
Might it have something to do with a news story that came out one day earlier in BLOOMBERG of all places:
Some six in 10 Americans approve of the job Donald Trump is doing to combat the coronavirus crisis, pushing the president’s approval rating – 49% – to the highest of his presidency, according to a poll released Tuesday by Gallup.
Trump’s gains come as his standing has improved among Democrats and independents amid the viral outbreak, which has killed more than 660 people even as the nation has adopted strict rules limiting public gatherings. Trump’s job approval numbers are up 6 points among Democrats and 8 points among independents, according to the survey.
And voters are largely giving Trump positive marks for his handling of the pandemic, with 94% of Republicans, 60% of independents, and 27% of Democrats approving of his efforts. That’s higher than his general approval rating among each group.
