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“I'm a bit of nerd when it comes to reporting … I'm the political type,” said a woman from the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, during a briefing on Monday, before asking, in particular in terrality, “so in what direction do you advise?”
This would have been a strange question for a journalist – whose work is to take the power to account, rather than asking Power how to spread his message – to put to Leavitt during a press briefing, but he was not a journalist. It was Kambree Nelson, “activist of the base that has become influencer of social media” and ambassador of “the American First Policy Institute”, with more than 600,000 subscribers on X. A woman who turned more upside down last year after having stopped being able to see the moon in the sky. “Why is everyone silent about it?” She Posted on X. “They are also silent on the white sun” (a reference to a conspiracy theory This maintains that the sun has changed color in recent years).
In fact, it was not a press briefing either. No, it was a whole new propaganda broadcasting session – sorry, A briefing “new media”As the official Youtube channel of the White House described it – which was held over three consecutive days this week.
It could have been more subtle for Leavitt to have stood in the official title rather than presenting each session as a “briefing of influence”, which rather gave the game on its objective. “I hope that more people in the inherited media are like you,” Leavitt replied in Nelson. (Without a doubt.) “The president does so many phenomenal things every day that will never be mentioned on cable news … This is still why we welcome in independent voices like yours, with social networks suites, because it is the best way to obtain these truths and these facts.”
This is not the first step that the White House has crossed in its crusade against the so-called inherited media, a term popularized by Elon Musk, who described us In December as “unpolished psy”. Trump has already prohibited the Associated Press of the Briefings because he refused to call the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” (I suppose that I am prohibited now), that a district judge ruled as unconstitutional. Last month, the Trump administration Permanent spot of deleted wire services in the press pool. And this week, the White House launched His own information style websiteWhitehouse.gov/wire, with only the most brilliant coverage of the president, of course.
I can see what they are trying to do here. To start, the establishment – a term with slightly less decrepit connotations than “inheritance” – the media have a major representation problem. A 2022 study By the Newhouse School of Public Communications from the University of Syracuse, 1,600 American journalists found that only 3.4% of them identified as Republicans, against 7.1% in 2013 and 18% in 2002. More than 10 times more, 36.4%, identified as Democrats (51.7% said they were “independent”).
In addition, the media of the establishment have had a lot in recent times, in particular – and not by coincidence – in the nine years since Trump has landed on the political scene. Of covering the fragility of Joe Biden has Explicitly reduce the objectivity of the declaration To portray those who questioned the history of origin of the Wuhan wet market for COVID-19 as the theorists of the conspiracy, certain points of sale generally seemed more interested in pushing a particular program than to seek the truth.
But it is easy to miss the woods for trees: it is not because there have been – in fact too – examples of making mistakes that the institutional media, with all its checks and counterweights and the field relationships that “new media” generally lack, can even be slightly compared to these Maga.
And let's be clear – these new “briefings of influence” are not, as Leavitt said, an attempt to “speak to all media and personalities”. I looked at the three and I did not spot any point of sale or leftist personality. I spotted Sean Spicer, one of the predecessors of Leavitt; Bitcoin fanatic has become Trump Surface Anthony “Pomp” Poseliano; And Arynne Wexler, “just a girl without Lib in a crazylib world”, who started with: “I can attest deportations in Florida: my Uber drivers finally speak English again, so thank you for that.”
Treating these “influencers” as if they were tied with serious journalists is not only disrespectful; It's dangerous. And hold a briefing in which only friendly propaganda disseminators are welcome could be OK in Pyongyang, but this is supposed to be the capital of the free world. For a president who generally seems to have such an instinctive understanding of Which makes good opticsIt is frankly a terrible look.
