Steve Bannon’s, “Flood the zone with shit,” described a highly effective media strategy. In response to this flood, the media would be intent on doing fact-checking (for instance) — and thus playing follow-the-leader as MAGA set the agenda, while the colossal deluge of lies and disinformation would overwhelm, tying news gatherers in knots.
In this morning’s Washington Post, Drew Harwell and Sarah Ellison report on a media strategy much more comprehensive than Bannon could have hoped for a mere 6 1/2 years ago. This strategy, which has been successfully implemented by the White House, is designed not simply to overwhelm the mainstream media (and other critics), but to displace independent viewpoints.
When Selena Gomez posted an Instagram video that humanized children threatened by Trump’s promise of mass deportations, the digital wizards at the White House responded:
The effort was part of a new administration strategy to transform the traditional White House press shop into a rapid-response influencer operation, disseminating messages directly to Americans through the memes, TikToks and podcasts where millions now get their news.
After years of working to undermine mainstream outlets and neutralize critical reporting, Trump’s allies are now pushing a parallel information universe of social media feeds and right-wing firebrands to sell the country on his expansionist approach to presidential power.
For the Trump team, that has involved aggressively confronting critics like Gomez, not just to “reframe the narrative” but to drown them out, said Kaelan Dorr, a deputy assistant to the president who runs the digital team.
Bannon appreciates the achievement by the White House: “Rapid-response communications are normally defensive. They’re all offense, all the time.”
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement that the approach is built to reach audiences without the media’s help and to broadcast Trump’s “America First message far and wide.”
But this model of messaging could supercharge the presidential bully pulpit until it shifts Americans’ perception of events, according to experts who study propaganda and the press. Like Trump’s moves to shore up loyalty in Congress and remake the judiciary, the strategy is designed to weaken his opponents and dismantle checks against executive power.
Undermining the accountability mission of the Fourth Estate and building a viral pipeline of state media helps the administration — and future ones — stifle dissent, said Anya Schiffrin, a senior lecturer at Columbia University’s School for International and Public Affairs.
And by replacing dispassionate observers with partisan cheerleaders, political leaders are elevating a class of messengers incentivized to defend their decisions, no matter the seriousness or scale. Every policy maneuver could turn into a meme.
Said Renee Hobbs, a communications professor at the University of Rhode Island: “It’s an effort to replace the mainstream press with a partisan press” that will function as the new “purveyors of reality.”
Democratic bewilderment
No wonder the Democrats, still adhering to 20th century methods of communicating and clinging to legacy news gathering organizations, are feeling bewildered by what’s happening.
Big money, really big money, is always on the side of lower taxes and deregulation. For a while in post-World War II America working- and middle-class folks in the United States were doing well. Incomes were healthy for working families, and the top income tax rates were high. Under Democratic public policies, people and their kids shared the wealth. But by the Reagan era, the times they were a-changin’.
The billionaires staged a comeback, step by patient step. From Leonard Leo’s capture of the courts, the Supreme Court became a corrupt, partisan tool of the Republican Party. The Roberts Court scaled back voting rights and fair representation to the advantage of the Republican Party: Citizens United v. FEC, Shelby County v. Holder, Rucho v. Common Cause. (The court also abandoned the Constitution to rule, in case after case, Democratic public policies as illegitimate.)
Rupert Murdock’s launch of Fox News Channel (still the leader of the conservative media universe almost 30 years later), served to erode mainstream media outfits and conventional journalistic standards. (FNC wasn’t the only factor at work.) This made a fortune for Murdock, but it took patience and deep pockets to pull off. Billionaires determined to break free from political restraints have proved to be persistent. It has taken decades — and careful planning and gobs of money (much of it dark money) — to get where we are.
And now, when the Silicon Valley’s tech billionaires are at the height of their power, the influence of social media continues to grow, while mainstream journalism retrenches. Combined with other Trump initiatives — catering to Republican-aligned media, suing corporate media, banning news agencies that won’t toe the Republican Party line, pushing aside the White House press corps, not to mention demeaning independent reporting that seeks to tell the truth — we have every reason to think that there’s lots more in store for us.
I’m tempted to say that I wish there were a savvy multi-billionaire ready and willing to take on the guys running the show now, so we could have a level playing field. Efforts to bolster a multiracial democracy, where the interests of working-class and middle-class folks count for as much as the interests of the billionaires, are faltering. Hoping for a rogue billionaire to serve as a counterweight to Musk and his fellows is undoubtedly unrealistic. And what a monumental task that would be.