For Trump, the medium is not the message

The Constitution holds that the president shall, from time to time, conduct a spurt of interviews with mainstream news outlets before going back to Fox. Or something like that. We’re currently seeing one of those spurts. Last week, Trump gave an interview to Reuters in the Oval Office; on Monday, he granted the same privilege to the New York Post. Yesterday, the president traveled to Phoenix—his first long trip out of Washington since the crisis brought on by COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, intensified—to visit a factory that makes face masks. (Trump did not wear a mask; outside, his supporters harassed local reporters who were wearing them.) While he was in town, Trump sat for an interview with David Muir, who anchors World News Tonight on ABC. It wasn’t the first time Trump has called on ABC for a non-Fox broadcast interview; last year, he gave 30 hours of access to George Stephanopoulos. Trump sitting down with an interviewer who isn’t a sycophant is a sufficiently rare opportunity that the most should always be made of it. Muir, some critics said, did not take his; CNN’s Oliver Darcy wrote afterward that the interview was a “miss” and had “failed to meet the moment.” Muir took a measured approach, and focused on big-picture issues—the risks of reopening the economy, testing, what Trump would say to Americans who’ve lost loved ones to the virus—away from Washington intrigue. Flame-throwers don’t always make the best interviewers. But to be... Continue reading at 'Columbia Journalism Review'

[ Columbia Journalism Review | 2020-05-06 12:04:22 UTC ]
News tagged with: #vanity fair #major stake #san diego #pulitzer prize

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