The Worst Thing to Come Out of Trump's Town Hall Didn't Come From Trump

[Nevilledog]

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2023/05/trump-cnn-town-hall-network-news-making-business/674028/

No paywall
https://archive.is/4IjgV

You already know what happened in CNN’s town hall with Donald Trump last night. You know it because you know Donald Trump. Performative cruelty, preening selfishness, bluster, hatred, insults, lies—it was a grotesque display made even worse by the fact that the grotesquerie was entirely predictable.

Trump is, in the strictest sense, old news. He is a known quantity. He is no longer capable of revealing anything new, about himself or his movement. Because of that, only one piece of relevant news emerged from the town hall. It came not from the event itself, but from the speech that CNN’s CEO, Chris Licht, delivered in a network-wide editorial call this morning. Licht congratulated the town hall’s moderator, Kaitlan Collins, on her effort to coax truth out of Trump’s lies. And he did so in particular terms: “Kaitlan pressed him again and again and made news,” Licht said, according to the media reporter (and former CNN anchor) Brian Stelter. “Made a lot of news.” And “that is our job.”

In one way, the claim is itself a form of old news, a mandate so tired and obvious as to be meaningless. CNN is in the news business. Of course its job would involve the making of news. But make a lot of news as the end point—as the sum of CNN’s work—is also profoundly outmoded. Trump has changed journalism’s equations. The new media environment has changed them as well. It is not, in fact, CNN’s job to make news. It is CNN’s job to report the news, to explain the news, to make sense of the news. Providing a stage for a known liar to tell his lies is not journalism. It is a costly act of concession.

In the 1960s, when television was the revolutionary technology reshaping American life, the historian Daniel Boorstin published The Image, his seminal criticism of the media in the age of the screen. In it, Boorstin coined the term pseudo-event to describe the spectacle that exists merely to be documented: the press conference, the news release, the campaign rally. The coinage informs today’s idea of the media event: the thing that occurs primarily so that journalists can tell their audiences about the occurrence. In the media event—a postmodern spectacle, manufactured and compelling—news will be made. Air will be filled. But nothing, meaningfully, will happen.

*snip*

[tulipsandroses]

1. I think this is exactly what Licht wanted. It wasn't a mistake, it was by design

He is happy to make news. As someone on MSNBC mentioned, this was not journalism. It was dishonest. Licht wanted to be news as he panders to RWers. This was all by design.

[Cha]

2. Interesting.. TY!

Ol Licht.. trying to make lemonade out of bitter lemons.

[Scrivener7]

3. Oh, boy. That is genius:

the spectacle that exists merely to be documented: the press conference, the news release, the campaign rally. The coinage informs today’s idea of the media event: the thing that occurs primarily so that journalists can tell their audiences about the occurrence. In the media event—a postmodern spectacle, manufactured and compelling—news will be made. Air will be filled. But nothing, meaningfully, will happen.

[Initech]

4. This was a political hit job. It did exactly what it was supposed to do.

Sow distrust in CNN to get people to turn on the network and turn them in favor of online propagandists like Breitbart and Infowars, and for that, it was a success. I feel like we're living 2016 all over again, but if that fucking asshole manages to slime his way back to the White House all hell will break loose.

[Hotler]

6. If he gets back in some blame needs to be laid at the feet of the DOJ IMO. nt

[no_hypocrisy]

5. The movie, "Network", is looking more and more like a documentary.

[ExWhoDoesntCare]

7. For those interested in an alternative to

Boorstin's The Image, I recommend the remarkable The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord. The Kindle version is only $2.99:

https://www.amazon.com/Society-Spectacle-Guy-Debord-ebook/dp/B004SD2F9E/

For those who hate Amazon, it's only $3.99 on Google Play:

https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Guy_Debord_Society_Of_The_Spectacle?id=yPhuCwAAQBAJ

I had to take a media studies course to fulfill degree requirements, and chose "Politics, Language and the Media." Both the Boorstin and Debord were part of the lesson plan; they're rather seminal in that niche of the media studies and linguistics fields, along with Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent.

I found the Debord the most accessible work of the three, thanks to its structure of a series of aphorisms with one-paragraph explanations to further expand on each idea. This "short and sweet" approach makes for much easier reading, while still conveying the import of the subject.