“Training a camera on a live event, and just letting it play out, is technology, not journalism; journalism requires editing and context,” Mr. Koppel wrote in an email. “I recognize that presidential utterances occupy a unique category. Within that category, however, President Trump has created a special compartment all his own.”
“The question, clearly, is whether his status as president of the United States obliges us to broadcast his every briefing live,” Mr. Koppel continued. “No. No more so than you at The Times should be obliged to provide your readers with a daily, verbatim account.”
Network producers and correspondents say there is often some internal debate about whether to carry the president’s appearances live and unfiltered. But given the intensity of the national crisis, many executives have concluded there is no justification for preventing Americans from hearing directly from the president and his health care administrators.
And a significant portion of the country is looking to Mr. Trump for its facts. A CBS News poll on Tuesday said that 90 percent of Republicans trusted Mr. Trump for accurate information about the pandemic; 14 percent of Democrats said the same.
Fox News has been a particularly popular venue for those who want to hear from the president. The network regularly accounts for roughly half the overall cable news audience for Mr. Trump’s briefings.
On Monday, Fox News alone attracted 6.2 million viewers for the president’s briefing — an astounding number for a 6 p.m. cable broadcast, more akin to the viewership for a popular prime-time sitcom. This past weekend, Fox News recorded its highest weekend viewership since its 2003 coverage of the gulf war.
Americans’ trust in the news media is also split along partisan lines. The CBS News poll said 13 percent of Republicans trusted the news media for information about the virus, versus 72 percent of Democrats.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/business/media/trump-coronavirus-briefings-ratings.html
Speak Your Mind
You must be logged in to post a comment.