Newspapers Must Lead Every Day with Running Log of Trump Lies
I call upon all American newspapers to print in the upper-leftmost corner of every day’s front page a log of unanswered Trump lies, with date-timestamps and source.
We’ve never had a war on the press quite like we have now. We’ve heard about it. We’ve read about it. We’ve seen movies of it. But we never thought it would land with such a smack-upside-the-head in 2017… right after American society crossed one of its most difficult cultural hurdles, electing a black president. Now it is relatively clear that it is in large measure because we’ve just crossed that threshold that the pendulum has swung so forcibly back.
OK, we have a reactionary society. And everything goes in cycles… or so we hope. If you’re a liberal you believe the pendulum needs to swing back to selflessness, science, and tolerance. If you’re a conservative, you believe it needs to swing back to personal responsibility, good jobs, and American values.
The proposal that follows is written with full recognition that 63 million people (!) voted for Trump in the hope he could — mostly — return to them the financial security and comfort they had before the age of automation and globalization. (Any liberal who ignores this is merely moaning.) Hopefully for the sake of those 63 million, he can. And if it were only automation and globalization, anyone could pull it off, at least for a few years in America, by burning more fossil fuels while putting the brakes on globalization. But there is a third factor: the 75-year trend of power agglomerating to money. Only time will tell if this is a hurdle too high for any politician to cross, in an attempt to forcibly redistribute wealth to Kansas, Kentucky, and coal miners. I predict it will dwarf the cultural leap made in electing a black president. But on to our main event.
Trump’s assault on facts and the press is a once-in-a-lifetime event. The press must fight back with a ferocity it’s unaccustomed to, one it has never learned. Perhaps now, while the newspaper business is near plateauing at its newfound, post-electronic low water mark, it is altogether fitting it has a reason for a war of its own. Poetic justice. And that leads in turn to a new opportunity for artistic license — albeit in a field that presumes artistry to be uninvolved.
Every newspaper that covers national news must print in the upper left corner of the first page a running log of unanswered Trump lies.
- The list DOES NOT CHANGE every day, except to the extent that it gets added to. The same lies that were unanswered yesterday are unanswered today so they must be printed again.
- Each item should include the statement, the date and exact time, down to the second if known, and the source/location/medium.
- The only thing I don’t have a strong feeling about is the sort order. If it were my newspaper I’d want at least the first few in “most important” order. From my perspective, lies that undermine due process of law, co-equal parts of American government, and sustaining the environment are the most important. After that, perhaps the rest of the list could be in “most recent” order.
- The list could be truncated after it hits ‘the fold’ in the paper, continuing on another page or a web page. (When the internet fills up we can get another one, same as the environment.)
- Shouldn’t it say “President” Trump? No. When he starts acting like one, not a petulant, thin-skinned, dictator, then it can, but there’s little chance of that.
- Shouldn’t it say “falsehoods” instead of lies? I’m glad you asked. I’ve thought about that a lot and determined this interesting rule: when a falsehood is perpetuated by the highest authority in a sphere of influence, it is no longer a falsehood but a lie. Ordinarily, we regard something as a lie only if we are claiming that it was known to be false by the person stating it. But if you are the president or otherwise have no one who has any way to hold you accountable, you get no such slack; you are a liar. That is the responsibility that goes with the job. Bada bing, bada boom… technically speaking.
- Why every day? For all prior politics that I’ve observed, there’s been this presumed phenomenon sort of like a believability ‘bank account.’ Here’s how it has always worked: politicians understandably spin things however it best serves their interests. Sometimes it’s a white lie; sometimes a whopper. Time passes and they do or don’t own up to the facts. A bigger lie takes more time to forgive-and-forget. And with good behavior we gladly forgive. But we can all see pretty clearly the run on the bank that Trump is doing. He doesn’t just take the money. Instead, every day he places a pile of dynamite in front of the truthiness vault and blows the whole thing up. After only a few weeks of his shock-and-awful campaign, he’s well on his way to completely devaluing truth. This is the only way the press can fight back.
- What about TV? Yes, they must do the same thing. I suggest a vertical sidebar on the right or left side of the screen, perhaps with a scroll. It could appear for only portions of the broadcast. That would be perfectly reasonable. I’ll show it on Joy Reid’s show since she’s the one most likely to have enough guts to insist on it.
And what about other countries? Should they publish the list in their media? I actually wonder if the media in other countries will have to lead the way.
