PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

History, if we ever get there in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, will not look kindly at how the media has covered the buffoon, reality-TV host who occupies the Oval Office.

That host, Donald Trump, has played the media like a drum.

Media columnist Margaret Sulliivan lays out this sad story in a piece for the Washington Post. It appeared under this headline:

“Trump has played the media like a puppet. We’re getting better — but history will not judge us kindly.”

I appreciated reading Sullivan’s trenchant analysis if only because I was trained as a journalist and, back in the day, was a reporter for a daily newspaper in Oregon. That gave me first-hand experience in the importance of a solid craft – being a journalist – with a view to serving readers ethically and honestly.

“I very much doubt, Sullivan wrote, “that history will judge mainstream journalism to have done a terrific job covering this president — including in this difficult moment.

“On the contrary, the coverage, overall, has been deeply flawed.”

Sullivan emphasizes several aspects of the flawed coverage:

• For nearly five years, the story has been Trump. And, in all that time, the press is still — mostly — covering him on the terms he dictates. We remain mesmerized, providing far too much attention to the daily circus he provides.
• We normalize far too much, offering deference to the office he occupies and a benefit of the doubt that is a vestige of the dignified norms of presidencies past.
• Trump has been able to make it all about him, and the press — with some notable exceptions — too often allows him to turn the coverage into a carnival. You can’t let the person you’re covering set the terms of the coverage, but that’s exactly what he has done.
• Every day — sometimes every hour — there’s some new craziness to distract us. Here is Trump suggesting that ingesting disinfectants may cure the coronavirus. Here he is trashing reporters on Twitter who won Pulitzer Prizes by talking about revoking their Nobel Prizes — but misspelling it as “Noble.” Here he is claiming he will somehow punish reporters by not having his near-daily briefings — and then changing his mind.
• And then we come back for more, writing headlines that somehow combine the words “Trump” and “strategy.” Or ponder in cable-news panels whether he’s turned the corner and started acting more presidential. Or downplay the sheer madness of the disinfectant idea with a news alert politely stating that ‘some experts’ call it dangerous.
• Television’s live coverage of briefings continues at many news organizations — allowing Trump to dominate the late-afternoon airwaves, day after day, with torrents of misinformation and narcissistic bragging.

Sullivan continues to quote a reporter for the Irish Times who said: “It is not just that Trump has treated the crisis merely as a way to feed tribal hatreds, but that this behavior has become normalized. When the freak show is live on TV every evening, and the star is boasting about his ratings, it is not really a freak show anymore.

“He added, pointedly: ‘For a very large and solid bloc of Americans, it is reality.’”

There. An incredible, bottom-line point.

Many Americans believe the drivel Trump spews every day, or perhaps even every moment. He tells a lie, then doubles-down as if the lie is not a lie and, as he emphasizes and re-emphasizes it, it becomes his version of truth,

Focus on just one of Trump’s demonstrably falsehoods: His statement that the country has done more tests “than the entire world combined.” Trump has said this over and over, and it has been corrected over and over, for it is demonstrably false.

He doesn’t care. He repeats it. And soon it becomes his version of the truth, reinforced by many reporters who repeat it, even if they also correct it.

When you cannot believe anything said by the person who sits in the Ova Office, better to ignore him – and hope for something credible to replace him.