Trump’s tiny Twitter sledgehammer
A new journalistic (and psychiatric) specialism is being created before our eyes: analysing the tweets of Donald J. Trump.
We can already state with absolute certainty that 2017 is going to be the year of Twitter, or rather Twitter and Donald Trump.
There has never been such an intimate, instant relationship before, between someone who is about to become one of the most powerful people in the world and an equally powerful means of communication that can circle the globe in seconds or less.
Whatever you think of Trump – and 140 characters may not cope all that well with the task – Twitter and Trump were made for each other.
The President-elect is already using his considerable latent power even before his inauguration to make things happen using the tiny Twitter sledgehammer.
A Trump tweet, combined with the threat of import taxes, was enough to persuade the mighty Ford motor corporation to drop plans for a $1.6 billion new car plant in Mexico and instead invest in expansion in Michigan.
Trump’s Twitter threats also played a part in persuading the air conditioning manufacturer Carrier to keep 1,000 jobs in Indiana.
More problematical, and indeed alarming, Trump is also using Twitter to shape US diplomatic policy.
The "Intelligence" briefing on so-called "Russian hacking" was delayed until Friday, perhaps more time needed to build a case. Very strange!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 4 January 2017
“North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S. It won’t happen,” Trump tweeted.
Then it was time to upset China with the following: “China has been taking out massive amounts of money & wealth from the U.S. in totally one-sided trade, but won’t help with North Korea. Nice!”
Once there was the printing press, then there was Twitter, now there is Twitter and Trump.
There should be no further releases from Gitmo. These are extremely dangerous people and should not be allowed back onto the battlefield.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 3 January 2017
Journalists and the media as a whole will have to get used to this unique relationship and find a way to avoid being led by the nose by someone who is using technology to dominate the news agenda, and doing it with bombast and abuse but also skill.
There have been 34,219 tweets from @realdonaldtrump and he has 18,545,675 followers but on a steeply rising curve since 9 November . By 23 January it is entirely possible that Trump will have 20 million Twitter followers even before his views are endlessly magnified by the traditional media and their online off-shoots.
Worryingly, Trump follows only 42 other Twitter users and they might not include too many people who disagree with him.
A new journalistic speciality, as well as a psychiatric specialism, is being created before our eyes – analysing the tweets of Trump.
A lot of work has already been done which suggests that there are two distinct streams of tweets almost certainly written by different people.
The United Nations has such great potential but right now it is just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time. So sad!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 26 December 2016
Unsurprisingly the stream of angry, abusive tweets appear to be the work of The Donald himself using a Samsung galaxy phone, while the less controversial more emollient ones come come via iPhones and are likely to be the work of his staff.
The really interesting question is what will happen when Trump actually becomes president. Will he continue to tweet? Will he be allowed to continue?
He will be reluctant to give up control of such a personal and powerful communications tool but there may be an increase in the level of staff input and a noticeable rise in reasonableness.
Russians are playing @CNN and @NBCNews for such fools – funny to watch, they don't have a clue! @FoxNews totally gets it!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 30, 2016
Whatever happens Trump has really underlined the power of Twitter in a way that little else could. And it is better than the “likes” of Facebook and living in a bubble of your own making.
There is no shortage of headbangers on Twitter – in the end they are best ignored – but there many people with real knowledge prepared to debate and argue and use 140 characters with stiletto-like precision.
Commenting on the resignation of our Brussels diplomat, Sir Ivan Rogers, the former Treasury permanent secretary Lord Macpherson went to Twitter under the hashtag “amateurism” to lament the destruction of EU expertise at the top levels of government “as wilful and total.”
Interesting that a former top Treasury mandarin should use Twitter as his weapon of choice.
Apart from coming to terms with Twitter and Trump, this year the media will face the problem of how to cope with outright falsehoods, particularly when they come from the rich and powerful, quite apart from the deliberate creation of fake news for profit.
The editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal Gerard Baker has not made the best possible start to this debate by declaring that his newspaper would not refer to false statements from the Trump administration as “lies.”
To do that would ascribe “a moral intent” to the statements, that the falsehoods had been deliberate.
Gerard should stop tying himself up in semantic knots.
A two-stage process can untie this one. Mistakes can be made inadvertently, though not so often by politicians. When a falsehood is confronted by the facts and is not corrected but repeated endlessly, as tends to happen, then it becomes a deliberate lie.
In such a context more work has to be done on traditional concepts of impartiality – not least by the BBC – and more rigorous exposing of falsehoods whether they are called lies or not.
First up the defence of press freedom from the crude threats of implementing Section 40 of the Crown and Courts Act 2013.
It would put a banana republic to shame if this Government goes ahead with imposing costs on newspapers, which are not members of an officially approved regulator, in libel and privacy cases, even in cases when the newspaper wins.
With the Brexit means Brexit mess looming it would be extraordinary if the Government were to push ahead and take on the united views of the press against a small but active pressure group in the shape of Hacked Off.
The latest poll for the News Media Association shows that only 1 per cent of the public sees tighter press regulation as a priority and the issue came bottom of a list of 16 concerns put to interviewees.
The topic has raised the issue of the BBC’s impartiality doctrine again on the Today programme. A visiting editor speaking on behalf of virtually the entire industry was pressed in detail about how effective independent regulation was – much more than the threat to press freedom from Section 40.
Then to “balance” things out a long interview with Max Mosley who many might say has an axe to grind.
Overall balance? An anti-press impression created.
Anyway, plenty for all fans of the media to get their teeth into in 2017 and you can be sure there’s much more to come.