The US president has access to classified information collected by the best intelligence services in the world, led by the CIA. He has a wide circle of advisers and experts who have accumulated years of experience in international politics and relations. But the current US president apparently prefers to get his information... from television.
This became clear once again in the comments Trump made during a visit to Scotland. Asked by journalists whether he agreed with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu that there is no mass famine in the Gaza Strip, Trump replied: "Judging from what I saw on TV, the kids look very hungry". And he added: "This is real famine. I saw it, you can't fake it."
So Trump gets the right conclusion in a disastrous way, writes David Graham in The Atlantic.
The American president has access to the largest information-gathering network in the world. Yet he cites television as his source of information. By getting his information from the mainstream media, he learns the news in the same way that his electorate does—perhaps one reason for his great success, Graham writes. But this approach narrows his understanding of important issues and creates risks of manipulation.
Trump is simply responding to public sentiment
In this particular case, the evidence suggests that Trump's judgment is correct. Representatives of the UN World Food Program have been warning for months about a humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip, where thousands are at risk of starvation, according to estimates by dozens of aid organizations. It was the footage, which was broadcast on most television screens around the world, that caused a turnaround in public opinion about the war in the Gaza Strip in many places, including the United States. Today, less than a quarter of Americans believe that the actions of the Israeli army are "fully justified", writes "The Atlantic".
Donald Trump is responding to such changes in public attitudes more than to changes in the events themselves, explains journalist David Graham. "As president, he sometimes treats events not as something he can control but as someone who simply watches them with a remote control in his hand - as if they offer only an opportunity for commentary, not for engagement with policies," Graham writes.
Does the TV screen know more than the experts?
Trump's insistence on getting information from television becomes even more dangerous when you consider that he often demonstrates distrust in the institutions of his own country. Many of his aides have said that he does not like to read or listen to briefings and detailed reports. More than once, the American president has said that he understands more about a given topic than the experts. Trump has a particular distrust of his intelligence agencies, which he demonstrated in his first term when he publicly stated that he trusted Vladimir Putin, rather than the assessment of American services.
But why is overconfidence in television news a problem? At first, they can hardly present an adequate picture if they are not part of a balanced information environment that also includes other sources. This is especially true for the television channel that Trump seems to prefer - "Fox News", writes "The Atlantic”. Another problem - the fact that the American president relies on television news to receive information on various issues creates an easy opportunity for manipulation.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham sometimes gives interviews to send various messages directly to the president. In one interview, a journalist asked Graham if he shared these thoughts with Trump, and he replied - "I just did".
The American President Wants to Control the Media
In the age of disinformation, however, all this is especially worrying, writes David Graham in his analysis. Nowadays, with the help of technology, extremely convincing fake videos and photos are already generated. Trump often shares such on his social networks. And the statement that "you can't fake something like that" regarding the starving people in Gaza, unfortunately, does not correspond to the truth. When it comes to the war in the Middle East, the American president has much more reliable evidence at his disposal, but it does not seem to impress him as much.
But it's not just television that influences Trump's opinion on individual issues, writes "The Atlantic". Trump also influences television. He has repeatedly demonstrated that he wants to exercise as much control as possible over US television channels and their content. Now, with the help of the Federal Communications Commission, he is working on the issue, the American publication also notes. This is most obvious at CBS, which signed an out-of-court settlement with Trump in a lawsuit against their iconic publicist program "60 Minutes". Then, the evening show of Stephen Colbert, a well-known critic of Trump, was taken down with the explanation that the reasons were financial. Instead of creating his own television channel, as he had previously planned, the American president can afford to simply "give advice" to the major television stations in the country and thus continue to try to construct his own reality.