Ever since he intemperately attacked Iran over three months ago, Donald Trump’s every prognostication about the war has commanded major news headlines.
Whether he is declaring victory, threatening annihilation, or insisting that a peace deal is two or three days away — all of which he has done, in succession, many times now — his words are splashed across the top of news pages everywhere.
But pretty much every time, those words have turned out to be meaningless. So those headlines served to deceive the public rather than inform it.
The headlines were particularly head-snapping today. In the morning, they were all “Trump says US will hit Iran ‘very hard,’ take control of energy infrastructure.” But by early afternoon, they were all “Trump cancels US strikes in Iran and suggests agreement is close.”
Whether it was another example of “Trump Always Chickens Out,” or another bout of wishful thinking, or just plain brain rot, we don’t yet know.
But it should be clearer than ever to newsroom leaders that Trump says whatever he feels like saying, with little or no connection to reality or to what comes next.
So it’s not really news anymore. In fact, it’s bullshit.
And it doesn’t belong in the top headlines anymore.
The top headlines should be about what is actually happening, not what he says will happen. You know, headlines about real things, like “Analysis of Satellite Image and Videos Suggest Precision U.S. Strikes on Iranian Water Facility” or “Delhi issues ‘strong protest’ after US strikes kill three Indian seafarers in Gulf.” Those articles, not Trump’s latest Truth Social post, deserve the lead spots on our news home pages and front pages.
And you know who best understands just how full of bull Trump’s statements are? The reporters who cover him. Occasionally, the truth leaks out of them, like in this not-long-for-this-world paragraph in the New York Times’s “live” coverage on Wednesday:
As Mr. Trump alternates between promising peace and threatening to return to full-scale war, neither is happening. Instead, the situation is as bewildering as ever, the two sides seeming to agree on nothing, prolonging the turmoil in the Middle East and leaving it unclear how or when the war will end.
(The first sentence made it to this article, but the rest of the paragraph did not.)
Most top publications have run at least one news analysis about how meaningless Trump’s words about Iran are. See: “Trump’s statements on Iran increasingly contradict each other”(Washington Post, April 29); or “Trump administration sows confusion as it tries to reopen Strait of Hormuz” (Associated Press, May 6); or “Trump Threatens Iran and Then Pulls Back, All in the Same Day” (May 16).
But they continue to churn out credulously stenographic daily stories anyway.
What’s particularly loony about headlining Trump’s statements is that actual reporting — you know, the stuff that real journalism is based on — doesn’t back them up. Most of the time, nobody — or at least nobody credible — can confirm what Trump is saying. Iranian officials often deny it. So the reporters end up just quoting from Trump’s Truth Social posts and then riffing on them.
That’s what happened today between 8:22 a.m. and 1:22 p.m.
At 8:22, Trump posted that “The United States will be hitting Iran (Whose Navy, Air Force, Radar, Anti Aircraft, and all other forms of Defense, together with most of its offensive capability, are GONE!), VERY HARD TONIGHT.” He also predicted a land invasion of Kharg Island.)
Then at 1:22 p.m. all bets were off: “Based on the fact that discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran have been brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved, I have, as President of the United States of America, cancelled the scheduled strikes and bombings against Iran this evening…. Time and place of the signing to be announced shortly.”
This of course was coming from the same guy who posted almost three months ago that “If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!”
(That would have been a war crime, by the way.)
More recently, over the Memorial Day weekend, Trump had the entire mainstream news apparatus lunging like Charlie Brown after Lucy’s football when he posted a statement on Saturday afternoon declaring imminent peace, once again. (“Final aspects and details of the Deal are currently being discussed, and will be announced shortly,” he wrote.) The resulting headlines: “Trump Says Peace Deal Is Near”; “Trump says Iran ceasefire deal in final stages, to be ‘announced shortly’”; and so on.
I say: Enough already. Trump’s statements should be quoted, sure, but with plenty of disclaimers.
Reserve the headlines for things we know to be true.
Also from Press Watch:
- “What changed Trump’s mind on Iran? Who the hell knows?” (April 10)
- “Acknowledging Trump’s derangement is the first step” (April 7)
- “The war makes it more urgent for journalists to call out Trump’s derangement” (March 10)