Controlling the News
My father always wanted to be the corpse at every funeral,
the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening
Alice Longworth Roosevelt, daughter of Teddy Roosevelt
Teddy Roosevelt was the youngest man to serve as President of the United States at forty-two. He was also the “first” modern President, using the turn of the century media to help achieve his political goals. In fact, Roosevelt’s Presidency was a direct result of the media.
One of the primary causes of the Spanish-American War of 1898 was the competition between the newspapers of New York City: Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World and William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal. In their drive for greater readership, both papers resorted to first embellishing stories about Spanish atrocities in Cuba, and then actually making them up, in order to heighten public tension. This created public pressure on the US Government, and resulted in the deployment of forces to Cuba, led by the Navy Cruiser USS Maine. When the Maine exploded in Havana Harbor from undetermined causes killing 260 men, the newspapers immediately blamed the Spanish and loudly demanded war.
The US proceeded to invade Cuba to fight the Spanish, and Teddy Roosevelt organized a regiment of cavalry called the Rough Riders. His leadership of that unit, particularly at the Battle of San Juan Hill and in conjunction with the accompanying newspaper coverage, put him in the national spotlight, leading to his election as Governor of New York. Within a year he was Vice President and, upon President McKinley’s death, the President of the United States.
Roosevelt was constantly aware of his “image” in the press, and continued to use them to forward his goals. Whether it was long hikes across Washington D.C. (including swims across the Potomac) proving his own energy and youth, or his insider support for “muckraking” authors like Upton Sinclair (his book, The Jungle, exposed the Chicago unsafe and unsanitary Chicago meatpacking industry) Roosevelt kept public pressure on the Congress to get his agenda passed.
While current President Donald Trump is “no Teddy Roosevelt,” he does have a well-developed sense of the media. It is clearly his goal to dominate every news cycle. There is an old saying, “no news is good news.” However, in the Trump Administration the phrase has been altered to say “any news is better than no news.” For example, this weekend the US news cycle was dominated by the news of the death of Senator John McCain, one of the very few Republicans to stand up against Trump.
In order to regain the news cycle, the Trump White House decided to create a controversy over the US flag flying over the building. It was lowered to half-staff immediately upon hearing of the Senator’s death on Saturday, but on Sunday was raised back up. The media then spent most of Monday focusing on whether the President would honor McCain by lowering the flag or not. He waited until Monday afternoon, stealing the daily news cycle, then begrudgingly declared a state of national mourning and officially lowering the flag.
But the Trump Administration has gone far past “stunts” to manipulate media attention. They also have gone to great lengths to create a theme that much of the media lies about the President. The President has instructed his supporters to ignore “Fake news.” That has become their battle cry when any story is presented that shows the Administration in a critical light. Yesterday Trump even went so far as to demand that Google change its search algorithm in order to make the Administration look better. He quoted a conservative blog article showing that Google on a given day showed over 90% negative articles when googling the President.
Chuck Todd of NBC’s Meet the Press had a great retort to this claim. He noted that almost all of the articles about the Cleveland Brown’s football team have been negative in the past three years. Todd pointed out that there wasn’t much positive to talk about a team that won 4 games and lost 44 over those three years (a 91% losing record.)
And like the Yellow Journalism of Hearst and Pulitzer, the President also is willing to create crises out of nothing. Monday night he met with Christian Evangelical leaders in the White House. In the meeting he stated:
“If the GOP loses(control of the House of Representatives in the November elections) they will overturn everything that we’ve done and they’ll do it quickly and violently, and violently. There’s violence. When you look at Antifa and you look at some of these groups — these are violent people.”
So, his message is that if he loses and the Democrats win, then there will be violence against Christians and Republicans by the Democrats. It’s a ludicrous idea, but it’s a continuing message to his base: if we lose, our world will end. Be ready to fight.
The Administration’s “fake news” and distractions continue on an hourly basis. Just in the past two days, from the flag, to violence, to firing Attorney General Sessions, to Google, to spreading rumors that China hacked Clinton’s email; they have tried to dodge the realities of the Russia investigation, and Democratic gains, and another burgeoning crisis over the inappropriate influence in the building of a new FBI headquarters (and its impact on Trump’s Washington Hotel.)
President Trump has certainly achieved one goal: he has so muddied American thought and perception that it is often difficult to tell what is real news, and what is fluff.
For those who have struggled against his media savvy there are two signs that may clarify the waters. The upcoming elections in November may create a new narrative with greater integrity. And the Mueller report will lay bare Trump’s flaws, dissolving his “Fake News.”
