The media work for Donald Trump
I wake up to his tweets. You have to admire his ability to control the news cycle
For the past several months, one of the first things I do in the morning after grabbing my phone off my nightstand is check Twitter for any new posts from Donald Trump. It always starts my day with some combination of headscratching, cringing, laughing, crying or all of those things at once. I can’t NOT look.
Seldom do I see his tweets first-hand. Rather, by the time I turn on my phone, I usually learn about the President-elect’s latest missive from numerous others’ retweets, comments or screenshots. Clearly, I’m not the only one waiting eagerly for the next unfiltered bombshell.
When Trump first started his bevy of 3 a.m. tweets last summer, the punditry saw it as a sign of obsession, at best, or delusion, at worst. Why, they asked incredulously, was someone with aspirations to be the next president of the United States sitting up at all hours picking Twitter fights with celebrities?
As shell-shocked media pundits scrambled to explain Mr. Trump’s victory in November, a new narrative emerged. His use of Twitter, they said, was all part of a brilliant strategy to speak directly to the American people – particularly the throng of supporters who adore his tell-it-like-it-is authenticity. The traditional press, they warned, was being bypassed.
But there’s a gaping hole in that narrative. The “American people,” at large, and Trump voters, specifically, are not on Twitter.
Last year, the Pew Foundation reported that only one in five U.S. adults regularly use Twitter. Last month, a Civic Science study of 10,000 Trump voters found that only one in 10 identified themselves as Twitter users. If you picture the white, rural, middleclass, older Americans who make up a sizable portion of the Trump cohort, surely you’re not surprised.
So why then would Mr. Trump focus so much energy on a social media platform that doesn’t even reach his supporters?
Because, do you know who IS on Twitter? Reporters. Almost all of them.
Once upon a time, reporters would stay up all night listening to the police blotter in hopes they would break the day’s big story. They would jockey for the front row of press conferences and beg for exclusive interviews to get newsmakers on record with juicy quotes or slip-ups.
Today, we have Twitter, where newsmakers congregate and media outlets eavesdrop, hoping desperately not to miss the latest zeitgeist driver. On Twitter, the most influential outlets set the agenda and dictate the trending topics – at least they did before Donald Trump came along.
Deliberately or not (you can underestimate him at your peril), Mr. Trump is fundamentally altering the media paradigm. Every time he fires off a controversial overnight tweet, he leaps ahead of the coming day’s news cycle and dictates the media’s agenda. Rather than subjecting himself to press conferences and public interviews, where reporters can steer him down a path of their choosing, Mr. Trump charts the course and the media has no choice but to follow. It’s a classic Prisoner’s Dilemma. If outlets choose to ignore the bait, they risk losing eyeballs and ad dollars to the outlets who play by Mr. Trump’s rules.
And, so, reporters and publishers are relegated to carrying Donald Trump’s message to the American people for him. Most writers and talking heads add their own take, for sure, but to what end? When someone from MSNBC, Huffington Post or another left-leaning outlet mocks Mr. Trump for a Tweet they deem out of line, they only do him a favor by reinforcing his agenda. His supporters don’t trust those outlets – “the dishonest media” – anyway. Instead, every time Mr. Trump gets a rise out of the liberal, intellectual or Hollywood establishment, his supporters love him even more. It’s a trap.
You may not like the guy. You may even question his intellect and overall sanity. But, when it comes to playing the media, Donald Trump is a virtuoso.