New White House influencer information is a terrible aspect

Unlock White House Clock Bulletin Free

Your guide on what Trump’s second term for Washington, Business and the World means

“I am a kind of Nerd at the time of informing me. I am the Nerd of the type of policy,” said a woman from White House Secretary of the Press, Karoline Leavitt, in an informative session, before asking me, in a significant way, so that politics deny, “What direction I advise me to enter?”

It would have been a strange question for a journalist, whose job is to have the power to take into account, instead of asking Power how to propagate his message – to put Leavitt in a press informative session, but he was not a reporter. It was Kambree Nelson, an “activist turned into influenced social media” and the ambassador of the beloved “American First Policy Institute”, with more than 600,000 X -followers. A woman who bothered the most last year after stopping to see the moon in the sky. “Why everyone is silent about this?” she Published Ax. “They are also quiet with the white sun” (a reference to a Theory of conspiracy This argues that the sun has changed color in recent years).

Nor was it a press information. No, this was a new propaganda dissemination session: sorry, An informative session “New Media”As described by the official Youtube channel of the White House, which was held in three consecutive days this week.

Perhaps it would have been more subtle for Leavitt to have stuck to the official title instead of introducing each session as a “influencer informed”, which rather gave the game on its purpose. “I would like more people in the media to be like you,” Leavitt responded to Nelson. (Undoubtedly.) “The President does so many phenomenal things every day that they will never be mentioned in cable news … This is, again, why they welcome independent voices like yours, with follow -up on social networks, because this is the best way to obtain these truths and these facts.”

This is not the first step the White House has taken to its crusade against the so -called media media, a term popularized by Elon Musk, who described us In December as “not stop psyp”. Trump has already banned Associated Press from information because he refused to call in the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” ​​(I suppose I am also banned), than a district judge has ruled as unconstitutional. Last month, Trump Administration Eliminated the Permanent Site of Filferro Services In the press pool. And this week the white house launched your own website in the news styleWhitehouse.gov/wire, of course, with the brightest coverage of the President.

I can see what they try to do here. To begin with, the establishment: A term with slightly less determined connotations than the “legacy” – The media have a major representation problem. A study of 2022 By the Newhouse School of Public School in Syracuse University, of 1,600 North -American journalists, found that only 3.4 percent of them were identified as Republicans, dropping 7.1 % in 2013 and 18 percent in 2002. More than ten times more, 36.4 percent, identified as Democrats (51.7 percent said they were “Independent”).

In addition, the means of establishment have achieved many things badly in recent times, in particular, and not casually, in the nine years or so, since Trump fell on the political scene. From Cobling of Joe Biden’s fragility into Explicitly reduce the objectivity of reports To portray those who questioned the history of the origin of the Wuhan Wet market for Covid-19 as the theorists of the conspiracy, some main points of sale have seemed more interested in pushing a certain agenda than to look for the truth.

But it is easy to lose the wood for the trees: just because there have been some, in fact, too many examples of being mistaken does not mean that the institutional media, with all their checks and balances and reports on the field that “new media” often lack a lot, they can even be slightly compared to these mouths.

And let’s be clear: these new “influencer information” are not, as Leavitt stated, an attempt to “talk to all media and personalities”. I saw all three and saw no range or personalities. I did Sean Spicer, one of Leavitt’s predecessors; Bitcoin Fanatic turned Trump Superfan Anthony “Pomp” Pompliano; And Arynne Wexler, “Only a non -library girl from a crazy world,” with whom he started: “I can prove Florida’s deportations: my Uber drivers finally speak English, so thank you for it.”

Treating these “influential” as if they were up to serious journalists is not only disrespectful; It’s dangerous. And hold an informative session in which only friendly propaganda disseminators are welcome to Pyongyang, but this is the capital of the free world. For a president who usually seems to have such instinctive understanding What you do for a good opticsThis is, frankly, a terrible aspect.

jemima.kelly@ft.com