lDonald Trump’s victory, proclaimed by the candidate himself, is clear. Seen by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), it invites a radical reading of this historic campaign. Donald Trump was not elected despite his antagonism toward the media, but because he turned them into his designated enemies.
In other words, American journalism not only played a peripheral role in structuring the public debate, but, worse still, was exploited by the future Republican president, who played against it instead of playing along, unlike his Democratic opponent. Having become the useful idiot in a political dispute that escapes its control, the fourth estate emerges as the big loser of this political sequence.
As Machiavelli (1469-1527) wrote, “Great men consider losing a shame, not cheating to win.”. Whether or not we judge his methods to be honest, Trump won and it is now important to analyze his media strategy and draw some lessons from it, hoping that the media will know how to use it, while populist candidates of all nations will. Now let’s make unrestrained use of the real playbook that Trump and his campaign team have published.
Immediately following this election, six facts distinguish this election from previous ones:
A death announcement
– The candidates, especially Donald Trump, avoided journalists and favored the programs that were at their disposal, influential people andinfotainment [l’info-divertissement] as platforms for their expression;
– The neutrality of social networks appears once again as a fiction: it commanded the campaign body and soul and transformed a platform into a weapon at the service of Trump. “You are the media now”Musk wrote on his platform when the victory was announced, as a death announcement for traditional media;
– the polarization of the media, the disappearance of all internal pluralism allows each camp to reinforce its opinion. To the point that polls show that Trump supporters believe above all in Trump himself as a source of information about the campaign. Fortunately, the local press comes second, opening a path of hope for peaceful public debate;
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