Are You Talking to Me?
As a teacher, it was always easier to lecture, rather than engage in discussion. Lecture was one-way communication. It could be planned out with ordered ideas in advance and presented in a logical fashion. If the lecture was entertaining and engaging, so much the better, as the student/audience stayed attuned to the subject.
The harder way was to engage the students, shaping the discussion using their questions and answers to still cover the topic in a logical manner. It took time, listening, and a lot of thought to make a “Socratic” method work, and often the questions were tough and formulating answers tougher.
One-way communication works well if you are talking to an audience that agrees with everything you say. It’s the Trump Administration’s favored means of communication. While they will send out the lower level “surrogates” to talk to the mainstream news media, strictly staying on “the point of the day,” in general the White House prefers to speak directly to the base through “tweets.” The President himself will talk to “safe” questioners, sticking to “Fox and Friends.” https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2017/06/22/donald-trump-loves-safe-space-fox-friends/216997
It has been abundantly clear that the Trump Administration strategy is to continually fight the mainstream media. This is a political decision: undercut public confidence in the press and communicate directly to the Trump base (30-40% of the current electorate.) Without awkward questions to be answered, without implied criticisms of executive actions, direct communication works perfectly.
Since Press Secretary Sean Spicer has been thoroughly burned out by this process, they brought out Deputy Sarah Huckabee Sanders. The White House determined not to have televised press conferences for several days (with some not even allowing audio), but when CNN retracted a story and fired three reporters, everyone was called into the press room with the cameras running. After a softball setup from the Breitbart News reporter, Sanders opened up on the press:
“I don’t know that it’s that the response isn’t good enough for the president. I think it’s the constant barrage of fake news that is directed at this president, probably, that has garnered a lot of his frustration. You point to that report; there are multiple other instances where that outlet that you referenced has been repeatedly wrong and had to point that out or had to correct it. There’s a video circulating now — whether it’s accurate or not, I don’t know — but I would encourage everyone in this room and, frankly, everybody across the country to take a look at it. I think if it is accurate, I think it’s a disgrace to all of media, to all of journalism…”
Brian Karem, correspondent from Playboy (I forgot they had good political articles, were they there when I was a kid?) responded, calling out Sanders and the administration for their ongoing attacks:
“Why in the name of heavens — any one of us, right, are replaceable. And any one of us, if we don’t get it right, the audience has the opportunity to turn the channel or not read us. You have been elected to serve for four years, at least; there’s no option other than that. We’re here to ask you questions. You’re here to provide the answers. And what you just did is inflammatory to people all over the country who look at it and say, “See, once again, the president is right, and everybody else out here is fake media.” And everybody in this room is only trying to do their job.”
http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/28/politics/donald-trump-sarah-huckabee-sanders-media/index.html
The “press conference” lasted just a few more minutes followed by Huckabee Sanders walking out, her message delivered. Her reference to a video was an “ambush” video of CNN personnel by “Project Veritas” edited to suggest that CNN was only reporting on the Russian connections for ratings (http://projectveritas.com/2017/06/28/van-jones-russia-is-nothing-burger-american-pravda-cnn-part-ii/)
CNN’s response http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/29/opinions/much-ado-about-nothing-burger-van-jones/index.html
The White House then continued its all-out twitter war against MSNBC and CNN. It’s one way communication, it’s a distraction from the real issues this Presidency faces with it’s program and it’s survival, and it’s a way to deny the truthfulness of those who question, much less answer.
In one of the first blogs written in February here on this site, Two Universes of Facts, it was lamented that there could not be “civil discourse” it there are no “common facts.” Over the past several months, it has become clear that the war on facts has continued, and hope for civil discourse has faded away.
If a majority of Americans feel left out and confused by the Trump communications strategy, they should. It’s not aimed at them, it’s aimed at generating the “base.” Ultimately it will be when “the base” determines that Trump’s results haven’t lived up to his promises that the Administration will be forced to answer.
