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For the press, then, the problem is not how to bring to light the truth that the President is a wholly unreliable source of information, but how to operate around him in light of the fact that we know he is likely to pollute the stream further when asked legitimate questions. 10/
The media scholar @wphillips49 has made a similar point in her work on how to cover online extremists. She takes note of the common phrase "sunlight disinfects." (Louis Brandeis, 1914, writing about the power of publicity: "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.") 11/
Sometimes it disinfects, says Whitney Phillips, but sunlight also makes things grow. https://www.cjr.org/the_new_gatekeepers/disinformation-whitney-phillips.php Her point: you can't necessarily "expose" an online extremist or troll campaign without completing their work for them, since media attention is how they thrive. 12/
This is why Phillips and other scholars have tried to introduce a term to newsroom decision-making: amplification. The facts are out there, but be careful about which ones you amplify because you may be assisting bad actors or spreading disinformation. https://datasociety.net/library/oxygen-of-amplification/ 13/
Same problem arises in the testy debate over how to cover Trump's (very trollish) virus briefings. When he says passengers on trains and flights in the US are being tested when they depart and when they arrive, BUT ITS A LIE, should that be amplified? https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/02/politics/fact-check-trump-plane-and-train-passengers-tested-for-the-coronavirus/index.html 14/
This happened, but should it be amplified? is one of the doubts that floats to the surface when we realize that "bringing one episode and then another out of darkness into vision" isn't helping with our biggest problems, even though we need journalists to keep digging. 15/
In Susan Glasser's April 9 report in the New Yorker there is a moment I have been unable to forget. She spoke to executives in Silicon Valley who tried to help with parts of the Trump government's response to the pandemic, until they came to realize there is no plan. — 16/ @sbg1
One of her sources, Eric Ries, had initially believed that it was only a matter of time until the federal government got its act together and came to the rescue of struggling firms and communities. "They did not realize this was a government failure by design," Glasser says. 17/
"...Not a problem to be fixed but a policy choice by President Trump that either would not or could not be undone. 'No one can believe it. That’s the No. 1 problem with the whole situation: the facts are known, but they are inconceivable,' Ries told me." 18/
The facts are known, but they are inconceivable. https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/the-coronavirus-and-how-the-united-states-ended-up-with-nurses-wearing-garbage-bags
Here's some white space so you can think on that... 19/
Here's some white space so you can think on that... 19/
Democracy can die in broad daylight too. I doubt that Donald Trump can be further exposed, even though we need journalists to keep digging. A pandemic compounded by deliberate misrule doesn't need to come to light. It has been revealed. Now we have to work on believing it. 20/END
