nomorefakenews.com June 15, 2013
Realize, first of all, that the normal attention span of elite media is about three days. If you can jam your version of data down their throats for that length of time, you’re golden.
Then you’re facing another three days. You start all over again.
You being the White House PR flack machine.
The overall effect you’re looking for is: here today, gone tomorrow (or in three days). Nothing sticks.
Therefore, the public, or that part of it that can still think and reflect at all, is yanked from one fragmentary story to another. Sooner or later, surrender comes.
“Do me. Give me your stories. I’ll buy them. Then I’ll forget them. Then I’ll buy the new ones.”
In this climate, there is no process that can be called reasoning. It doesn’t exist. It’s all about What’s New.
Fast&Furious? Old hat. Benghazi? He said-he said. Who cares? The Feds spying on AP reporters? A yawner.
No traction. That’s the goal of every modern White House press corps.
Of course, along come stories that can’t be slid out of the pan and tossed in the garbage. A war. A mass shooting in a school or a theater.
In that case, the White House quickly develops a message. The theme. The takeaway.
“What’s our agenda here? What do we want to leave people with?”
“Mental health. This Lanza kid was a nutjob. Therefore, America needs a better mental health system. The president will announce a new program to install community mental-health centers across the land.”
“And guns. The kid had access to his mother’s guns. Feeds into taking all the guns away. From everybody.”
White House PR flacks spread these messages to the press and enlist the help of Congresspeople to make supporting statements.
They invent reality for the masses.
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