In a recent
Talking Points Memo Josh Marshall was telling the MSM to stop being crybabies about losing access. I saw how Bush treated the DC press like dirt and they ate it up. My friend
Eric Boehlert's great book Lapdogs was all about how the press rolled over for Bush.
If they do get kicked out of the press conferences they might start noticing how Trump has continued to play them. So most of them are beyond help, but that doesn't mean that WE can't do their job.
In the piece Marshall also said,
"If you're an activist or politician start mobilizing against his corruption."
I totally agree with this. And when we do,
we need to understand how any stories we uncover about him and his corruption will be played out in the mainstream media.
We also need to anticipate how Trump will flip a narrative or twist reality to shut down a story. We need to learn to give the press multiple story lines.
That means we might start with salacious headlines but keep going deeper than the surface story.
The reason for this is that in the era of Twitter, Trump is alway getting the last word. Getting him to respond to each new aspect of the story keeps the story going. (In the olden day's people would say, "That story has legs." Sadly the media do NOT think this way--so we need to.
Preparing a story needs to be like preparing a multi-tiered legal case. We are up against a lawyer in a $5,000 suit with mob ties and a Russian flag pin. We need to prepare for narratives, counter narratives, blatant lying, no follow-up, lying surrogates, threats, veiled threats and unveiled threats. There will be blatant lying, visits from "Friends of Joey No-Socks," computer hacking and reality hacking.
We need to anticipate Trump's weasling. Things like "I never said or did what everyone saw me do and say on that video." Plus the "It's 3:00 am, here is a new Tweet to write about!" problem.
So, let's play a game called
"I've uncovered a new case of Trump corruption!"
Think you have a "slam dunk" case against Trump? Ask yourself, based on what we know now about how Trump responds, what would make the story fail?
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A white weasel standing up near a hole
in the brown, winter grass.
Photo credit: Jana M. Cisar / USFWS
weasel, winter coat weasel white weasel |
It's great to get damning info and evidence of corruption, but we must keep working up the chain of this scandal/story. We know that it will be dismissed, spun, handled, ignored and normalized.
Therefore we need to anticipate how he will turn incriminating stories about him and his problems into a story about the hypocrisy of the DEMOCRATS. We need to build into our story how he will turn everything into a story of Trump being the real victim...
After that we need to prepare for how Trump will change what would be a major liability for others into an asset. Not only an asset, but a strength, something a REAL Man would do. Something that Putin and other tough guys could see themselves doing. (BTW, I gamed out this exact scenario with the PeeGate Tape just for grins. I now have a very frightening grin)
The reason that we need to do all this is to prepare for how the "neutral media" will write about us and the inevitable stories we uncover. The people on the left keep throwing up their hands when they see how easily the media are out maneuvered. As I said, the media haven't adapted but neither have our expectations of the media. Our ability to be the media have grown, but we still get put into boxes and weak narratives by journalists and pundits.
Sometimes we need to do the media's job for them. A lot of bloggers started from this position. We need to reinject ourselves in the process, as well as understand the role of instant access in social media.
