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(THREAD) In just 90 minutes on Tuesday, the media broadcast more disinformation about COVID-19 and a host of other topics—by putting Trump on-air live—than the Proof trilogy could dispel in 250 years. I can't even say how depressing this is. And there's *no counterbalance* to it.
(1) Only two things get anywhere in the *vicinity* of the media coverage Trump gets, and even then only a fraction of that coverage: the statements made by Joe Biden in public, and a small number of Trump books by celebrities (notably, Michael Cohen, Mary Trump and Bob Woodward).
(2) With Biden, we focus so much on the horse-race between him and Trump that if he goes to a debate and does little to defuse Trump's disinformation—but Trump acts like a hideous monster—we nevertheless conclude that Biden won the debate. But America as a country loses terribly.
(3) Consider the discussion, at the debate, of Trump's rallies. Here's what America was told—without any contradiction whatsoever: that Trump has exclusively held rallies outside that pose no public health danger whatsoever. American media broadcast that dangerous disinformation.
(4) In fact, Donald Trump famously held a massive rally *indoors* that he was told not to hold. It happened in Tulsa, many people got sick, some died, it caused a spike in cases in Oklahoma, and the Trump campaign was caught *removing signage at the venue* intended to save lives.
(5) Trump's rallies now are held inside hangars. Trump's team zip-ties the chairs together so people can't get away from one another, has them stand waiting for Trump—packed like sardines—for hours, and does nothing to ensure that anyone's masked. In fact Trump discourages masks.
(6) Trump's rallies violate state/municipal laws/statutes, even as he talks about "law and order." When questioned about what he and his team are doing and all the people they're endangering, he lies systematically. That media exposed America to Trump's disinformation is obscene.
(7) Yesterday we learned that, per a new study, Trump is the number one spreader of pandemic disinformation in the United States. But we already knew that. And media knew that. And we knew it had cost over a quarter of a million lives in 6 months. Trump was still put on-air—live.
(8) Maybe media should run stories on those of us who've dedicated our lives to spreading accurate research on events in the Trump era—and how *dispiriting* it is to do that work, face attacks for it daily, be largely ignored by media, then watch media *broadcast disinformation*.
(9) What major-media journalists say is that while they regularly broadcast disinformation, they try to clear things up at some point thereafter—maybe a few minutes after, or maybe a few hours after. But does media ever ask *why they aired the disinformation in the first place*?
(10) Sometimes media tries to make up for months and months of disinformation by covering—for one news cycle—some new book about Trump that has 2-3 newsworthy tidbits of gossip about the president.
Mind you, it does so after permitting a *tsunami* of Trump disinformation daily.
Mind you, it does so after permitting a *tsunami* of Trump disinformation daily.
(11) I've said on this feed that metajournalism honors the best conventional journalism, and starts from the presumption that there's too *much* great journalism for readers to consume, rather than too little. But I don't discuss how metajournalism fights Trumpist disinformation.
(12) Trump is, by volume, the largest purveyor of disinformation in the history of the U.S.—*and* the most effective. Media knew years ago that its old methods were not sufficient to protect America from Trump's disinformation, and it did nothing whatsoever to change its methods.
(13) One purpose of metajournalism is to provide thousands of clear, hard, discrete data-points in a single book—distilling accurate information from thousands of reliable major-media news articles. If the "Proof" books feel like tsunamis, that's because they are—and *aim to be*.
(14) Many don't realize that the Proof books were all given high-concept titles; the title of each book is intended to be exactly and literally what's inside of it. My theory was that the only way to combat a tsunami of disinformation was with a tsunami of *accurate* information.
(15) I like Mary Trump's book very much. It's a good memoir. It occasionally gives us a glimpse into the president's psyche, and tells us a lot about his family (and specifically, about Mary's father, and his somewhat tragic life). It's *not* a response to Trump's disinformation.
(16) Cohen's book is a solid memoir that tells us much that Cohen had already told us, but some of it new and useful—maybe 5-6 items in the book. No one could mistake Cohen's book for a systematic response to Trump disinformation. It's a celebrity memoir by an infamous newsmaker.
(17) The books by Woodward and Wolff outsold all other Trump books. As they're written by journalists, we hold them to a *far* higher standard than a celebrity memoir. The simple fact is that these books don't come anywhere close to meeting the moment that they were written into.
(18) What these men did was interview Trumpists they knew were liars and repeated their lies in book format—aware that because these lies hadn't previously been told, they would be covered widely by media. But largely what came out in those books was *palace intrigue and gossip*.
(19) I work in a field—post-internet cultural theory—that is, in major part, about dynamically responding to the challenges of the digital age. I also happen to be an attorney and researcher and editor and author and political columnist. But my books arose out of cultural theory.
(20) I didn't want to write a memoir, as memoirs are subjective, and pursue a narrow lens on a topic. It ensures they can only correct a small amount of disinformation. I certainly didn't want to, like Wolff, interview a man—Bannon—I thought would be indicted as a liar and fraud.
(21) I didn't, like Woodward, want to give a megaphone to Trump's lies via a series of interviews—even if selected moments in those interviews confirm for us things we actually already knew for sure. Correcting Trump's lies is *not* the same as providing new accurate information.
(22) I'm glad that people tasked with saving America who *spectacularly* failed to do so—like Strzok and Weissmann—wrote books that sometimes (sort of) acknowledge that they treated Donald Trump differently than *any American would have been treated*, and in doing so abetted him.
(23) None of these books sought a new paradigm for responding to the largest wave of disinformation that's ever washed over the United States. All of them were the same type of book we've seen for decades: celebrity memoirs, gossip books, public mea culpas and infamous tell-alls.
(24) Because I've been a journalist since I was 17, I'm daily angry at mainstream journalism. Because I've been a working author since 1998, I'm daily angry at mainstream nonfiction writers. As *professionals in an emergency*, we were obligated to do *more* than more of the same.
(25) Decades on, historians will ask, "Did they know they were facing a historic threat?" And the infuriating honest answer is that all of the intelligentsia—and more than half of America—*did* know. But the consensus was we *didn't need to change anything* to meet the challenge.
(26) I don't care that Biden and Trump and the Presidential Debate Commission wanted the debates to go forward, despite a systematic disinformation threat. Even the most honorable politician is—inalterably—involved in a dirty arena with *always-already compromised* ethical mores.
(27) Media had an obligation not to air the debates—and it failed. It'll say that it failed because it has an obligation to pass on to America anything newsworthy, no matter the format and no matter how much disinformation comes with it. I teach journalism and sorry, that's *BS*.
(28) Media could easily have *not* aired the debates, then run hard-news reporting on any actual news that came out of the live recording. It could've avoided repeating any disinformation. The reason the debates ran live is because there was money in doing so—*period*.
*Period*.
*Period*.
(29) Publishing had an obligation to change its operations as well—it saw that the nation was in an emergency, and understood that it would be publishing books that could strike a historic blow against the largest wave of disinformation America has ever faced.
Publishing failed.
Publishing failed.
(30) Any good Proof of Corruption could've done for America by providing it with the a generative tsunami of accurate information was completely undermined and indeed decimated by the same publisher publishing a raft of lies by Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
That was a disgraceful act.
That was a disgraceful act.
(31) I've fought to get the treatment for the Proof series that the highest ideals of publishing would suggest—ideals the publication of the series in the first instance was inspired by. But the books that matter most are the books that sell the most—even in a national emergency.
(32) I don't fault anyone I worked with. But publishing institutions broadly writ did just as little to change their thinking—in the midst of the worst emergency since WWII—as conventional journalism.
And few or no voices inside the house were shouting that it must be different.
And few or no voices inside the house were shouting that it must be different.
(33) I have, at times, been inspired by certain professionals in another one of the fields I belong to—the law—and the way they have changed how they talk about the law and the tone they use in offering analysis to try to reflect the *extraordinary* circumstances we all now face.
(34) But we have also seen the *worst* qualities of lawyers on display among, for instance, individuals in the Trump administration, and within the Republican Party, who believe the law to be a sword with which to exert dominion, not a shield with which to protect the vulnerable.
(35) And we've seen federal judges who *knew* they were dealing with a career dishonest litigant in Trump—a man who systematically stalls, delays, lies, and hides evidence to keep any issue in his cases from becoming "justiciable"—do *nothing* to speed their dockets in response.
(CONCLUSION) Every indicator in American life told all of us—whatever our field—that in our various realms we'd have to perform in an extraordinary fashion, taking extraordinary steps to respond to extraordinary circumstances. Doctors and nurses did—but too few of the rest of us.
(NOTE) I expect I'll be angry daily through the final tally of the votes in this election, and that my anger will often be directed at media, politicians, publishing, and judges. I can't *believe* that so many failed to see the threat we were under.
Worse, I fear they *did* see.
Worse, I fear they *did* see.
(NOTE2) I don't really think this needs to be said, but—of course—it goes without saying that there are individuals in all these fields who have taken extraordinary steps to do things they've never done before because we're in a national emergency. They already know who they are.
