It's no secret that the past few months since the inauguration of Donald Trump have been perhaps the most scandalous and widely criticized in the history of the modern Presidency. The first 100 days have thus far seem to consist more of committing every cardinal sin of the media than achieving the list of polarizing goals set out on a now infamous campaign trail. While it is true that the criticisms of President Trump could surely write more than one blog post in themselves, there is a bigger issue that fuels the flames for what is shaping up to be an administration rife with controversy. That issue is effective communication.
When analyzing the Commander in Chief's communication strategies, one must simply take a glance at perhaps the most famous Twitter feed in the world to see this unprecedented stance on communicating Presidential opinion, stance, and action to the public. Social media has been the source for some of the more controversial moments of the Trump administration, with typos from Education secretaries, grammatical phrases that would have Webster and Shakespeare rolling over in their graves, and statements that make even the most ignorant tilt their head in confusion.
However, while the social media platform does reach a wider range of people, in recent times it has not been where the controversy originates. Instead, the spotlight falls on Sean Spicer, who is already making a name for himself as both White House Easter Bunny and one of the most notorious Press Secretaries in US History. From "alternative facts" to "Holocaust centers" there are few press conferences that have so far gone off without at least one statement being used against him and the reflection of the Trump administration that he represents.
One could go on about the bigotry, the intellectual inadequacies that Spicer exerts, raging over the completely unpardonable butchering of significant world tragedy and lamenting over the lack of fluid, well crafted speech that would commonly be expected for one who is the head of public relations for one of the most important institutions in the world, but that is merely the surface of the issue. While it is true that such ignorance should not be tolerated in a world slowly evolving towards acknowledging hard truths correctly, there exists an element of ineffective communication that creates the atmosphere of uninformed animosity that currently prevails in American society.
Partially at fault is the media, whose biases are far reaching on all spectra, muddling information that then proceeds to cause a level of discourse in society that only succeeds in dividing the public apart instead of together to achieve a common goal of social progression. This is not to say that biased pieces should be discouraged, on the contrary, there will, and should always be bias, but the lack of the more unbiased sources has caused a dramatic shift towards an age of misunderstanding and ignorance. For example, taking a look at the significant learning curve facing this green administration shows these consequences of less purely factual portrayals in the media, as many voted based solely on big words and some passionate yelling both at the podium and in the newsroom.
However, on top of a long corrupt media system, comes a key issue facing the American public in current times. Not only is the media heavily biased, but many of the people in charge of creating the information in the first place are part of a government institution being run by businessmen and, similarly to attempting to making business deals, are portraying key issues in warped ways to make people believe what they are attempting to promote. Alternative facts, indeed. The problem is that there are also those who know more and are fervently working against the institution, screaming truth, shoving historical repetition into anyone who will listen's face, plastering social movements on every platform available. This creates a polarizing disconnect. For the average American, who may not have a PhD in Sociology or be the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company, they are pulled back and forth between one end to another, until they either check out or stray from their own personal belief systems for simple peace of mind. The cause of all of this lies in ineffective communication.
Every time Spicer "miscommunicates", stating that Hitler didn't use chemical weapons or that the Trump inauguration was the largest in history simply out of spite, an untruth is sent out to the media who then interprets it with a biased filter, which then is taken by an intellectual and presented in another complex format. How can someone who has better things to do than interpret news sources all day possibly keep up with what's actually happening in the world? The media will always be biased, this much is true, but the source of the information has the capacity to lower the overall muddled-ness that would otherwise come from the current trend of contradiction and pettiness.
The White House has a duty to the public: to communicate their intentions and events clearly and truthfully. The government serves the people by the will of the people and are therefore obligated to communicate in a manner that does not jumble preexisting events in poorly structured comparisons or be laced in unnecessary rivalry. For even when a Press Secretary gives an entirely factual, unbiased report on say, a diplomatic conference in Moscow, the media will still conform it to their specific image, and the rest of us will still have to piece together facts to get a clear picture of what's actually going on. When the White House is sending out tweets full of sudden aggression or hosting press conferences that cast a veil of shame at the lack of composure in the system, the process has been put on steroids, and by the time the small bit of information has been sent through the ringer that is the media platform, there's hardly any unbiased truth left. Society cannot progress healthily in an age of blurriness, of animosity simply for the sake of aggression, and undignified flailing when the learning curve is too great. It's high time for the White House to drag themselves from the depths that they have been stuck in since even before Trump's inauguration and back into the world of candor if we should all want to survive without killing each other over convoluted opinions.
teeny, tiny font.
ReplyDelete