Donald Trump has a dilemma. Along with the rest of the Republican Party, he forgets the idea of introducing the kind of federal relief program that would actually help people and prevent the nation’s economy from collapsing in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. But that kind of content relief just means giving working people money, which serves against the GOP’s core organizing principle, which is that the government exists to line the pockets of the rich at the expense of everyone.
Republicans and Trump, however, realize that their economic stance is wildly unpopular with most Americans, who do not see the pandemic as an exciting opportunity to experiment with how many millions of people can be fired or predicted out of their homes without the stock market crashing. If an election is difficult, doing nothing while the country falls apart is seen as a bad omen for the party currently controlling the Senate and the White House.
It turns out that Trump and his Republican allies have stuck to a scheme: Try to trick the public into thinking they are taking bold action, when in fact they are doing absolutely nothing.
Unfortunately, this is a strategy that is all too often aided by the mainstream media, which, despite recent improvements in coverage, still gets caught up in deeply integrated bad habits, such as a tendency towards false equivalence and a tendency to false White House to parrot conversation points in headers. The result is a sea of misleading stories as news segments that portray Republicans as meaningful, when the true story is about a degree of malice toward the audience that is so breathtaking that beginners believe.
Over the weekend, Trump used a strategy so ham-fisted that any reporter, editor, or producer who fell for it should consider the medieval tradition of self-flagellation in repentance. With great fanfare, Trump announced on Saturday that he had signed “executive orders” that would get any help that would flow to reach Americans, despite Congress’s failure to pass another coronavirus relief package, a failure that Trump the Democrats accused – even though the House gave a bill in May and it is Senate Republicans who have halted the talks and refused to negotiate further.
As Heather Digby Parton detailed Monday morning, these “executive orders” are a joke – in fact, is just one of four documents Trump signed on Saturday, even in terms of that label – and they will probably be a bit, if one, get help that flows to people who need it. This was completely predictable, because Trump, a long-time gripper who was false about being a successful businessman on TV – has a habit of making big promises that he immediately shuts down.
But his fake-out worked pretty much as intended, and media sources pleaded obligatory headlines making it sound like Trump was sending people out, which he did not and never likely intended to do.
The Associated Press and Reuters – whose reporting is syndicated in local newspapers across the country – both went with headlines that sat things like, “Trump signs orders for coronavirus relief“en”Trump extends unemployment benefits, defends payroll taxes, “without noting that three of the four so-called orders are merely” memoranda “that are likely to end up toothless due to Trump’s legal superiority.
“Trump announces executive action to provide economic relief after stimulus talks break,” reads a headline from Politico.
“Side step Congress, Trump signs executive measures for pandemic relief,” the New York Times claims.
“Trump signs 4 executive actions on coronavirus relief,” ABC News announced.
These types of headers are misleading in two ways. First, they make the executive actions sound much more substantive than they actually are, leading readers to believe that help will come if it does not come at all or will be too unimportant to make a real difference. Like Scott Lemieux of lawyers, guns and money notes, these executive actions are “vaporware” and should never be taken seriously by the press.
More importantly, these headlines serve to hide the most basic takeaway, which is that Trump’s actions are about refuse help people, not expand it. Trump’s dog-and-pony show is an attempt to divert attention from the fact that House Democrats have already passed a bill and Republicans are blocking it from becoming law. If the president wanted serious relief for the people, he could press the Republican-controlled Senate to vote on the bill that Democrats have already passed, with a promise to sign it. Pieces of paper in front of the cameras would not be able to detract from that fact, and yet we are here.
Trump’s little circus trick only worked over the weekend because it built on another massive and widespread media failure, which is to falsely frame this falsehood as a “both sides” story, instead of accurately reporting on the Republican responsibility for failure of coronavirus relief certificate.
As Cydney Hargas reported on Media Matters on Sunday afternoon, Sunday morning’s news shows were a minefield of false equivalence, with reporters in the House of Representatives spokeswoman Nancy Pelosi for refusing to “compromise” with Republicans and “both sides” accuse of failure to pass an account.
This followed a week of headlines that fell into the same trap of accusing “Congress” of failing to pass a bill, and using the passive voice, with wordings like “talks fail”, all making it seem like some reasonable process was in play and both parties are equally at fault.
In fact, this is a one-sided problem. The problem is not “both sides” or “Congress.” They’re the Republicans. Democrats passed a relief bill in May, and have already offered to compromise on the size of the package, as long as what happens is real relief, and is not just a lip service maneuver meant to to be seen as relief, but doing nothing substantial. The problem is not that Democrats will not compromise. It’s that Republicans does not want to pass another relief.
But the mainstream media is still living in fear of being accused of ‘liberal bias’, thus replacing this passive voice, both sides-of-blame coverage that only serves to confuse the public.
This kind of coverage frames the issue in a way that serves the political interests of Republicans – while actively harming the interests of ordinary Americans, for whom they also vote. The media are obsessed with the prospect of ignoring a bill, any bill, and ignore the question of whether the bill actually does anything to cause the economic catastrophe caused by the pandemic. There is no use in Democrats signing up for a bill that will not work, just so they can say they have passed something. Americans need, not some useless paper that the media and Republicans can trumpet as a “bipartisan compromise solution.”
The good news is that these Republican antics are likely to fail, as Parton claimed on Monday morning. No matter how many Potemkin-executive memos Trump signs or how many gruff offers Republican lawmakers make to reporters, the basic reality is that the public wants to know that they’re abandoned by the federal government – and that the blame is probably on their shoulders. of Republicans, who still have most of the power in Washington. Media-trickery can only go so far. People pretty quickly understand what happens when the checks stop coming.
Yet, by falling for Republican tricks and running misleading headlines, the mainstream media is muddying the waters and sowing even more distrust and confusion. Considering how close these elections are likely to be and how much depends on them, we can not afford to leave even a handful of voters confused about what is actually happening in DC. Now more than ever, it is important for the media to embrace the fetish for “balance” and focus on reporting the truth.
