Unlock the free White House watch bulletin
His guide about what Trump’s second term means for Washington, Business and the World
“I am a kind of nerd when it comes to informing … I am the political nerd,” said a woman from the White House Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, in an informative session on Monday, before asking, in a remarkably direct fashion, “So, in what direction do you advise me to find out?”
It would have been a strange question for a journalist, whose work is to hold power, instead of asking Power how to spread his message, to put Leavitt at a press conference, but this was not a reporter. It was Krear Nelson, a “base activist turned into the influence of social networks” and ambassador of the estimated “American First Policy Institute”, with more than 600,000 followers in X. A woman who bothered more last year after he stopped seeing the moon in the sky. “Why are everyone silent about this?” she Posted in x. “They are silent on the white sun too” (a reference to a conspiracy theory That argues that the sun has changed color in recent years).
Nor, in fact, this was information about the press. No, this was a new propaganda dissemination session, I’m sorry, An informative session of “New Media”As described by the official YouTube channel of the White House, which was held in three consecutive days this week.
It could have been more subtle that Leavitt has attached to the official title instead of introducing each session as an “Information Session of influence”, which rather gave the game in terms of its purpose. “I would like more people in the inherited media to be like you,” Leavitt replied to Nelson. (Definitely). “The president is doing so many phenomenal things every day that they will never be mentioned in cable news … which is, again, why we are welcoming independent voices such as yours, with followers on social networks, because that is the best way to get those truths and those facts.”
This is not the first step that the White House has given in its crusade against the so -called inherited media, a term popularized by Elon Musk, who He described us In December as a “non stop psy op”. Trump has already banned Associated Press from the information sessions because he refused to call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” (I suppose I am also forbidden), that a district judge has ruled as unconstitutional. Last month, the Trump administration The permanent point of eliminated cable services In the press pool. And this week, the White House launched Your own news websiteWhitehouse.gov/wire, with only the brightest coverage of the president, of course.
I can see what they are trying to do here. For the beginning, the establishment, a term with slightly less decrepit connotations than the “legacy”, the media have an important representation problem. A 2022 study For the Newhouse School of Public Public Communications of 1,600 US journalists from Syracuse’s University, he found that only 3.4 percent of them identified themselves as Republicans, below 7.1 percent in 2013 and 18 percent in 2002. More than 10 times more, 36.4 percent, identified as Democrats (51.7 percent said they were “independent”).
In addition, the media have been wrong in recent times, in particular, and not by coincidence, in the nine years or so since Trump landed in the political scene. From covering the fragility of Joe Biden to explicitly reducing the objectivity of the reports To portray those who questioned the history of origin of the Wuhan wet market for Covid-19 as conspiracy theorists, some points of sale have often seemed more interested in pushing a particular agenda than looking for the truth.
But it is easy to miss the wood for the trees: just because there have been some, in fact, too many, examples of making mistakes do not mean that the institutional means, with all their controls and balances and reports on the soil that generally lack the “new media”, can even be slightly compared to these mag will make up.
And let’s be clear: these new “Informative Influence Sessions” are not, as Leavitt said, an attempt to “talk to all media and personalities.” I watched all three and I didn’t see the left outputs or personalities. I saw Sean Spicer, one of Leavitt’s predecessors; The Bitcoin fan became Trump Superfan Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano; And Arynne Wexler, “Only a girl No LIB in a world of Crazylib”, which began with: “I can attest to deportations in Florida: my Uber drivers finally speak English again, so thanks for that.”
Treating these “influential” as if they were on par with serious journalists is not only disrespectful; It is dangerous. And celebrate an informative session in which only the friendly propaganda disseminators are welcome could be fine in Pyongyang, but this is destined to be the capital of the free world. For a president who generally seems to have such an instinctive understanding of What makes a good opticThis is, frankly, a terrible look.