MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell tore into the major cable news networks, including MSNBC, on Thursday after they aired former President Donald Trump’s press conference live and didn’t “fact-check every lie” he told.
O’Donnell then complained that “to make a bad news coverage situation worse, none of the networks – none of them – carried Kamala Harris’ speech live after the Trump appearance. None of them.”
O’Donnell concluded, “It’s 2016 all over again. The same mistakes are being made. I have never seen an industry slower at learning from its own stupid mistakes than the American news business, and you cannot expect them in the next 89 days to figure out what they haven’t been able to figure out in nine years: how to cover a Trump for president campaign.”
That is true so often, even when it’s a non-crazy press conference. It would be so easy to just stick an omnidirectional mic in the press gaggle.
It’s intentional. If they had a mic for the press, you’d see the press better able to, well, press the politician in question.
The last thing people like Trump want is a journalist pressing him on why he keeps dodging questions and chopping word-salad.
But I don’t just mean for Trump. They almost never do it.
What the person being questioned is supposed to do is repeat the question before answering it. I suspect they’re intentionally not doing that.
Sure, but it’s not necessary. An omni mic in the press gaggle would be fine. It wouldn’t even require much work in terms of an audio mix and they definitely have someone doing a live mix anyway. We’re talking fading in and out.