Lakoff urges the use of what he calls a “truth sandwich.”
Enter George Lakoff. An author, cognitive scientist and linguist who has long studied how propaganda works, he believes it’s long past time for the reality-based news media to stop kowtowing to the emperor.
“Trump needs the media, and the media help him by repeating what he says,” Lakoff said.
That would be okay under normal circumstances, he told me, but “this situation is not normal — you have a sustained attack on the democracy and the news media.”
First, he says, get as close to the overall, big-picture truth as possible right away. (Thus the gist of the Trump-in-Singapore story: Little of substance was accomplished in the summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, despite the pageantry.) Then report what Trump is claiming about it: achievement of world peace. And then, in the same story or broadcast, fact-check his claims.
That’s the truth sandwich — reality, spin, reality — all in one tasty, democracy-nourishing meal.
Avoid retelling the lies. Avoid putting them in headlines, leads or tweets, he says. Because it is that very amplification that gives them power.
That’s how propaganda works on the brain: through repetition, even when part of that repetition is fact-checking.
Hillary Clinton, Lakoff notes, was convicted without cause for many people by Trump’s repetition of “crooked Hillary.”
Journalists have lost trust, for some, because of Trump’s drumbeat that they are the “fake news media.”
And the insistence that the special counsel’s investigation is a groundless “witch hunt” — even when that is often debunked, and clearly untrue — gains traction because he just keeps saying it.
“Trump is subjecting American democracy to a brutal test,” Lakoff wrote in the Guardian recently. As Lakoff sees it, the press “has become complicit with Trump by allowing itself to be used as an amplifier for his falsehoods and frames.”
Jay Rosen of New York University sums up one such proposal in three words: “Send the interns.”
White House briefings, since the very beginning of Sean Spicer’s efforts to defend the indefensible about the size of Trump’s inauguration crowd, are no place for talented, highly compensated reporters to spend their time and energy.
They have also become a place that lacks not just candor but also civility, as Sarah Huckabee Sanders showed last week when she refused to answer reasonable questions, repeated lies about Trump’s immigration policy, which is tearing children from their parents, and then took a nasty swipe at CNN’s Jim Acosta: “I know it’s hard for you to understand even short sentences.”
So, Rosen says, go ahead and continue to staff these briefings. But send the interns.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...2351b5ece99_story.html?utm_term=.00a0c84e26b3
Enter George Lakoff. An author, cognitive scientist and linguist who has long studied how propaganda works, he believes it’s long past time for the reality-based news media to stop kowtowing to the emperor.
“Trump needs the media, and the media help him by repeating what he says,” Lakoff said.
That would be okay under normal circumstances, he told me, but “this situation is not normal — you have a sustained attack on the democracy and the news media.”
First, he says, get as close to the overall, big-picture truth as possible right away. (Thus the gist of the Trump-in-Singapore story: Little of substance was accomplished in the summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, despite the pageantry.) Then report what Trump is claiming about it: achievement of world peace. And then, in the same story or broadcast, fact-check his claims.
That’s the truth sandwich — reality, spin, reality — all in one tasty, democracy-nourishing meal.
Avoid retelling the lies. Avoid putting them in headlines, leads or tweets, he says. Because it is that very amplification that gives them power.
That’s how propaganda works on the brain: through repetition, even when part of that repetition is fact-checking.
Hillary Clinton, Lakoff notes, was convicted without cause for many people by Trump’s repetition of “crooked Hillary.”
Journalists have lost trust, for some, because of Trump’s drumbeat that they are the “fake news media.”
And the insistence that the special counsel’s investigation is a groundless “witch hunt” — even when that is often debunked, and clearly untrue — gains traction because he just keeps saying it.
“Trump is subjecting American democracy to a brutal test,” Lakoff wrote in the Guardian recently. As Lakoff sees it, the press “has become complicit with Trump by allowing itself to be used as an amplifier for his falsehoods and frames.”
Jay Rosen of New York University sums up one such proposal in three words: “Send the interns.”
White House briefings, since the very beginning of Sean Spicer’s efforts to defend the indefensible about the size of Trump’s inauguration crowd, are no place for talented, highly compensated reporters to spend their time and energy.
They have also become a place that lacks not just candor but also civility, as Sarah Huckabee Sanders showed last week when she refused to answer reasonable questions, repeated lies about Trump’s immigration policy, which is tearing children from their parents, and then took a nasty swipe at CNN’s Jim Acosta: “I know it’s hard for you to understand even short sentences.”
So, Rosen says, go ahead and continue to staff these briefings. But send the interns.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/life...2351b5ece99_story.html?utm_term=.00a0c84e26b3
