The Media Is Obsessed With Trump’s Tweets – We Should Know Better
How to deal with a president’s desire for attention
By now it’s an all too familiar story. Every time US-President Donald Trump tweets something particularly outrageous, the media follows up with a range of articles chronicling and interpreting his latest Twitter extravaganza. So was the case when he recently attacked the press, bashed two leading Democrats and retweeted right-wing crackpots. A quick Google search will return hundreds of articles for each. The media seems just as addicted to Trump’s tweets as he is to Twitter.
Yet, despite the fact that his latest retweets sparked a diplomatic crisis between the UK and the US, the media should know better and stop playing a game they cannot win. At best, most of Trumps’s tweets show us a mentally deranged 71-year-old racist, misogynist and [enter attribute here]. At worst, they are part of a cunning media strategy.
No matter the motive, the outcome is always the same:
- They exploit the media to spread his message beyond his loyal Twitter following and his core base. The media are amplifying his message (for free) through excess coverage.
- Overwhelmingly, Trump’s tweets divert our attention away from the real issues (tax reform, health care act…
