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The Media’s Magic Eight Ball
Why U.S. media outlets must stop jumping the gun on Trump.
“If Whistleblower is Right, Trump May Have Committed Extortion and Bribery.” shouts the Daily Beast. “Trumps Ukraine gambit could be another campaign finance crime,” crows Slate.
Looks like. Could be. Might have. May have. Might be?
“The facts are dribbling out about President Trump’s efforts to seek official foreign assistance to take actions that would harm his domestic political rivals,” according to the experts at MSN.
It’s an almost formulaic headline, written by political opponents of President Trump in the press: An admission of pure speculation followed by it restated as a matter of fact.
We don’t really know if it’s true: But it’s true
If you have to insert the line “Um, hello? That is a HUGE deal.” into your article, it’s obviously not a HUGE deal at all. Or even a huge deal.
What we know looks really, really bad for Trump. Even the headline insists that “what we know” aren’t the full facts of the story but that, if anything, it “looks” really, really bad for Trump.
For Trump, the media outlets assure their embattled readers still reeling from Russia-gate, this is the beginning of the end; we’ve finally got him.