Dear Members of the Press,
As this eventful year grinds to a close, I write to you as a citizen, a reader, a listener, and a viewer to plead that you prepare carefully for the post-presidency of Donald J. Trump.
Perhaps it would be most useful to you if I began with a self-administered survey. What, as a consumer of news media, would I like to hear about Donald Trump after 12:00 PM on January 20, 2021? Preferably, absolutely nothing. Barring that, AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE.
My preferences of course arise in part from my politics. I have been an ardent critic and opponent of President Trump's since he first launched his campaign in 2015. But my bias does not, I would argue, make my input invalid.
Even the President's supporters would have to admit that Donald Trump has manipulated the news media like no president before him. Moreover, as long as he wielded the power of his office, there were severe limits on what you as professionals could do to evade that manipulation. Whatever the president says or does is virtually by definition "newsworthy," you were thus bound by the ethics of your trade to report his words, even when they were gratuitously offensive, deliberately misleading, or disingenuously provocative.
All of that changes on January 20, however. Once Trump is a private citizen, his pronouncements become no more newsworthy than that of any other celebrity. This principle is very important to think through and work with, if you hope to maintain your professional integrity, because experience teaches us that Donald Trump will try to get you to forget it. He will broadcast progressively more offensive slurs, progressively more outrageous lies, and stage progressively more lurid scenes of turmoil and mayhem to keep your cameras, microphones, and headlines focused on him.
His instincts for this kind of spectacle are uncanny. Just this morning he has broken through the tragic news of the pandemic that has killed 300,000 Americans by releasing a video. It satirizes the 1993 "Beef: It's What's For Dinner" ad by setting scenes of the Trump presidency over Aaron Copland's familiar "Rodeo" suite, and trolls the president's critics by, for example, implying that he has (or should have) been awarded several Nobel Peace Prizes.
This is just a taste of what is to come. Conspiracy theories. Racist innuendo. Twitter brawls with Rosie O'Donnell and Alec Baldwin. A smorgasbord of madcap fun awaits.
Let's be honest. Some of this is about money, and Trump knows it. Even as Trump has excoriated you all as "enemies of the people," he has aided your bottom line by generating so much news. I do not mean this observation as a criticism. Constructing a system driven by sales and profit and then denigrating those who do what they must to survive according to those rules is one of the most clever and hypocritical tactics by which the powerful perpetuate their control in America- I won't play that game with you.
But continuing to cash in on the public appetite for "Trump outrage" will only be profitable in the short term. Ultimately, allowing the entire media to degenerate to the level of tabloid exploitation hurts everyone and everything, including your bottom line. News can only remain a profitable commodity in the long run if it remains news, and for that to be true it must retain relevancy. "News" sold purely for its entertainment value (which is the only value that anything coming from Trump will retain, once he is out of office) will eventually be driven off the market by other, more artful and rewarding diversions.
So this is what I beg of you, as someone who has a great deal at stake in your success. After January 20, 2021, I ask that before you publish or air ANY story about Donald Trump, you think carefully about a single question: "Is this news?" If you are performing this operation conscientiously, given Trump's proven track record, 9 times out of 10 the answer will be "no".
I and others will be watching carefully. If you appear too mercenary or opportunistic in your coverage of Trump, your audience is likely to apply pressure by way of boycotts and "news fasts" to get you to correct course. But I am optimistic it will not come to that. Most of the press has shown courage, dedication, and integrity during these challenging years, for which I thank you. I look forward to profiting from your work as we cross the approaching threshold, and wish you all a Happy New Year!
Sincerely,
Andrew Meyer
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