Were COVID Briefings a Boldstroke or a Blunder? Only Time Will Tell

It has been damned if he doesn't and damned if he does for President Trump since day one. And the apparent end of his regular Covid-19 briefings offers another good case in point.

The briefings probably were necessary in order to reassure a rattled nation. But they were also politically risky, given the President's unfortunate tendency toward logorrhea, combined with a gotcha media looking for reasons to make him look bad, which he routinely serves up on a platter. The risks were multiplied five-fold in an election year, when presidents typically become extremely risk-averse. Circumstances would have argued for very controlled and closely managed briefings, at which the President said little -- serving largely as a tone- and theme-setting MC -- leaving the Veep and assembled experts to take lead on the pitfall-prone complexities.

In terms of their overall impact, political and psychological, I think the briefings should be judged a success, despite the flaps they were almost certain to generate. His advisors probably would have preferred a much more controlled and cautious approach. The briefings could have been scheduled less regularly and more formally formatted, lowering the chance for gaffes. But Trump, in typical fashion, let it all hang out and made himself the star of every show. It's too soon to tell whether that was a bold stroke or a blunder. But the briefings are sure to loom large as a pivot point when histories of this campaign season are written. 

The briefings should have been, well, briefer, with far less spontaneity and give-and-take with the press. That would have been the conventional advice most communications pros would have given any conventional president under such circumstances. But Trump has without question been the most unconventional and unscripted President of the modern era, for good or ill. He's obviously oblivious to such guidance and won't or can't be managed, which one might count as a virtue or vice depending on your take on Trump.

Now that he's feeling burned and reportedly dialing back these events, appropriately in my view, the dominant media narrative will change. The "story" will become his alleged lack of engagement, transparency, compassion, courage, accountability, bitterness toward the press, whatever. He'll be caricatured by some (absurdly, in my view) as the bumbler who urged Americans to chug Lysol. The media got two or three good "gotchas" out of the deal, and Trump had a way to connect with Americans very directly, which may or may not have worked in his favor, despite a few missteps.

Now this interesting (and sometimes entertaining) experiment in spontaneous, freewheeling, shoot-from-the-lip presidential leadership must end, potentially to the detriment of everyday Americans, due to a supercharged media environment in which no quarter is given on either side. That's unfortunate, in my opinion. It's rare that a President and the White House press corps can let "it all hang out," so to speak. The immediacy of live events and lack of scripting gave viewers a fascinating opportunity to see the President and press at work, in the raw. 

Some days the President came off looking better than the press, from my perspective; some days I came away with the opposite impression. The lively and unfiltered (and sometimes petty) sparring left it for viewers to decide who was behaving appropriately. Such freewheeling interactions, on such a regular basis, are rare to see in these times. And we'll be unlikely to see them again, I'm betting, even if Trump wins a second term.

People often ask why today's politicians, particularly Presidents, are so carefully scripted and managed. Well, this is why today's politicians, particularly our Presidents, are so carefully scripted and managed.

The Green Media Menace

Veteran Wisconsin political reporter Ron Seely is this year’s recipient of the David R. Brower Award, given annually by the The Sierra Club to a journalist for his or her “outstanding environmental coverage.” Seely undoubtedly was honored to accept the award and happy to hang it on his trophy wall. But to me there’s something troubling about this seemingly-innocuous episode, which highlights the near-total demolition of any wall of separation between “environmental journalism” and environmental activism.     

We’ve all heard about the scourge of “yellow journalism.” But these days it’s the green media news consumers should be wary of. 

Let's ignore for now the question of who David Brower was and what kind of role model he makes for journalists. Any review of Brower's story and statements shows that he embodied few qualities a professional journalist should emulate. Let's skip over, as well, the rather ironic fact that Brower was at one point drummed-out of the club, by no lesser a light than Ansel Adams, over ideological differences and alleged financial improprieties.   

  

Today let's just imagine the outcry that would result if the energy industry began handing out journalism awards. No credible journalist would accept such a dubious "honor," for obvious reasons. Liberal pundits would howl in derision at the audacity of Evil Oil trying to pollute the purity of American newsrooms. Enviros would completely freak-out. The recipient would continue his or her career, if she or he still had one, under a constant cloud of suspicion.

Ron Seely wouldn’t think of accepting an award for energy-related writing from BP or Exxon-Mobile. That he’ll gladly take one from the rabidly anti-fossil fuel Sierra Club -- a charter member of America's booming Environmental Anxiety Industry -- highlights a troubling double standard that further blurs distinctions between journalism and activism. That most journalists evidently don’t see The Sierra Club as part of a powerful political lobby, with an agenda that’s due the same journalistic detachment, scrutiny and skepticism any other special interest group is, makes the blind spot (and bias) obvious.

Most of today's "environmental journalists" seem like environmentalists first and journalists a distant second. Alert readers readily detect this just by reading the tone of reporting on that beat. Almost every major news shop now has an environmental beat blogger on staff, whose work product rarely differs from what Big Green's press peeps churn out, making the latter group almost superfluous.  

It's just one of the reasons I long ago dropped my membership in the Society of Environmental Journalists, which has become another news industry auxiliary of Big Green, to no one’s apparent alarm. These days, it's as if The Sierra Club has a presence in every newsroom, which routinely tilts coverage in favor of the extreme green position.

This can also be seen, if one wants further evidence, in the intolerance toward climate skeptics (now routinely derided as “deniers" by many journalists) that a growing number of supposed news organizations are showing, with some effectively banning all expression of doubt and dissent – all deviations from climate change orthodoxy – from their pages. The Los Angeles Times has led the purge by banning climate skeptics from their “opinion” pages.       

News people naturally will deny this bias, like they deny every other obvious bias, but the fact that no one in professional journalism questions or condemns colleagues for accepting The David Brower Award shows that this is a blind spot betraying a double standard, confirming a bias. 

Now for a Little Substance

Close of voting is just five days away. An untold number of ballots already have been cast, thanks to early and mail-in voting. Yet this is the first serious examination I've seen of where Tancredo and Hickenlooper differ on energy, water and environmental issues, though these are among the most important they'll deal with as governor. The differences are stark, but many Post readers, unless they did independent research, probably cast their votes in ignorance of these differences. The story comes too late to have the impact it should.

One of my many beefs with the media is how campaigns are typically covered. Most of the focus is on the horse race aspects, or tisk-tisking over the nasty campaign ads, while too little attention is paid, and often too late, to substantive differences between candidates. The media has made some adjustments to the prolonged voting period, which begins weeks before actual "election day" (maybe we should start using the term "election month"), but still seems to operate on the old timeline, holding important stories like this one until the 11th hour.

This story ought to have run weeks ago, when it could have stirred more debate and perhaps made a difference. As is, it's almost an afterthought -- something we should have talked more about before, not after, we elected a new governor.

Hit the Road, Helen

The forced retirement of Helen Thomas, so-called "dean of the White House press corps," was about 20 or 30 years overdue, in my opinion. The daffy old crone has been making a fool of herself for at least that long, maybe longer, by badgering presidents and presidential press secretaries with all sorts of stupid, slanted, irrelevant questions. But she was tolerated, even venerated by colleagues, as long as the silliness came with a left-leaning spin. Only after Israel became the target of her barbs did press corps colleagues finally decide that she'd gone too far -- which only serves to confirm the political bias that's so deeply ingrained in the biz.

Enjoy your retirement, old war horse. I know I will.