In the previous post, Flood the Zone, we explained some of the ways the Republican Reptiles are overloading the mainstream media with a near-continuous firehosing of bullshit and distractions to hide the truly nefarious goings on. It isn’t difficult to see how it works and it isn’t new. Being fooled by it is new-ish.
In the past few decades, politicians behaving badly usually resulted in the politician being charged and convicted (George Santos) or resigning (Gary Hart) or suddenly being ignored by the media (Joe Clark, Erin O’Toole, Dubya 1 and 2, Rudy Giuliani) with media essentially saying “You’re dead to us”
The difficulty with news media is that they have an obligation to stay somewhere near truthfulness. Truth, accuracy and objectivity are the hallmarks of actual reporting, be it electronic, social media or print.
It is also one of those damn hard things to do in the realm of actual journalism.
Historically the Washington Post wouldn’t break the Watergate story unil Woodward and Bernstein came up with a second corroborating source that the break-in at the Watergate Hotel into the Democratic National Headquarters was controlled by the White House. That source was Mark Felt, codename ‘Deep Throat” who knew all the details and connected the dots for the WaPo. The rest of the explosion can be read here, the real core starting point being the sources that provided confirmation sufficient to allow the then-publisher Katherine Graham to greenlight the reporting and risk the wrath of the Nixonian White House.
Here’s why Flood The Zone works: It forces media to skip fact-checking and only report what talking point was regurgitated. Fact-checking takes time. Fact-checking takes knowledge. Fact-checking needs corroberating sources that are sometimes impenatrable in their jargon. Fact-checking takes memory longer than the last hour. Fact-checking also takes a certain amount of fearlessness.
With all the media cutbacks in the last two decades, there are very few editors, assistant editors, sourcing desks or even low-level asssistants left employed to perform even the most cursory of examination of expostulated ‘facts’ in a political puke point.
For instance, a story of last week: Qatar offers to gift a 747-800 with an “Imperial Interior” to US President Donnie the Felon. Obvious story hook, grift, bribery, sleazy shit by Diaper Don, same same.
Here are some underreported facts that media has not covered as best we can tell: The aircraft was one of two bought by the Qatari Amiri Fleet as VIP transports. The Qatari Royal Family bought them two at a time in 2012, then had them fitted out with the appropriate plush interiors. One was gifted to Turkey, tail number VQ-BSK that entered fleet service in 2015, repainted all-white and has a ludicrously low number of hours and cycles on the airframe. For the non-aviation minded, that is 7/10ths of 1% of Fuck All use. It hasn’t even scuffed the molding nubs off the tires.
The one that Donny has a semi-hard-on for is A7-HBJ. Again, full plush interior, has barely 1,000 hours and 279 cycles and has been in storage for five years. Donny got to feel the rugs in February and asked if he could have it, which was not commonly known. Qatar didn’t just up and offer it to Felon 47 out of the goodness of their hearts and try to cobble together some boondoggle to get it for free. forever. Felon 47 wanted it. Qatar gets to have a $400 million IOU with the US President and Diaper Don gets to pretend he’s a Grand Poobah of Excellence in Every Way Possible. And keep the plane!
By comparison, Jimmy Carter, who had a working, prosperous, peanut farm when he was elected Prez, was forced to put it into a blind trust that he did not control, before he could take office. Trumpp hasn’t even released his personal taxes from Trump 1.0, let alone Dumpster Fire 2.0.
So why no fact-checking or sourcing? For me, a regular guy, it took close to two hours to dig up verifiable facts on the aircraft and their history. Media doesn’t have that kind of time, or people with expertise available to gather even the most rudimentary facts about one tiny piece of the story.
Media and I mean all of them, electronic, social and print, do not care about the facts in the story and the nuance of the story. From my research, again about two hours real time, Trump will get a gift of an older, full-luxe 747-800 that does not have any of the Department of Defence modifications (still to be added including air-to-air refuelling and highly secure comms) with very few airframe hours and doesn’t even have enough seats to handle the usual Presidential transport duties and he gets to keep it after he leaves office. (2)
What Media cares about is the outrage, which is at best a days’ coverage by talking heads or a few column inches. It might even run a week of the public attention. Then a further outrage (Don Jr. saying Dr. Jill Biden was so stupid she couldn’t spot fourth stage prostate cancer in her husband (1) and she hid it from everyone, if she did) Or that Wal-Mart will be passing on the tariff price increases to consumers, while Felon 47 says Wal-Mart shoppers would react harshly if Wal-Mart did not eat the cost of the very tariffs Felon 47 put in place.
There was an old newroom apocryphal quote from back in day that said “If it bleeds, it leads”, meaning death, dismemberment, gore, outrage or manufactured fear and hate these days, is always the lead story to garner the most eyeballs, likes or comments. The quote goes back to the 1890’s with William Randolph Hearst and the Hearst paper empire, but it still rings true. The only reason George Floyd’s killing made the news was because they had footage, tape or images. Rodney King’s beating, same thing. If we’ve got tape then that’s the story. The actual facts behind it, well, we ain’t got time for that right now.
This is not new. Two things have changed, first is the speed that media pushes the new lead and second, the complete abscence of the slightest fact checking to give you, the viewer, some kind of context for what the actual fuck did I just see? Christ I am pissed OFF! Which is what the media wants: Anger responses are very strong, as are Flight or Fight responses.
Why do you think US TV Stations in Tornado Alley spend tons of money on the best radar equipment money can buy? If they can have a meat puppet in front of a green screen pointing out a marching red line image that indicates possible tornadic activity and the breathless, over-caffeinated tones of the reporter urging all citizens to hide, shelter or kiss your ass goodbye. Follow that up with shots of uprooted trees, upturned cars and trucks and some white trash trailer park whore tearfully, sobbing hat she can’t find her kitty cat named Punkin when the winds blew away her trailer. You get to punch the audience with all kinds of emotions. Did I just describe any news clip from the past 20 years from Tornado Alley during tornado season?
Now you see why Flood the Zone works. It plays off our fears and anger, then leverages the simple fact that media has not got the resources to check the facts and has the bias inherent in pushing raw emotions at us for nothing more than ratings and money. This is us, the public, getting the media we deserve.
The number of people I personally know and have talked with, that have completely removed any news media from their personal space is remarkable in a very bad way. An informed, rational citizenry is the cornerstone of Democracy. Having said that, I do understand why people opt out with the whipsawing and the outrage. Your thoughts?
(1) Dr. Jill Biden is not a medical doctor, her doctorate is in Education.
(2) CNN is only now (Tues May 20th, 1500 hrs EDT) breaking the story that the whole Qatari aircraft gift story is a complete load of shit. Felon 47 saw the shiny thing and wanted it
RoadDave 