CNN chief Jeff Zucker has expressed regret for broadcasting Trump’s 2016 rallies, which contributed to the Republican candidate reaping billions of dollars in free airtime. Now as Trump seeks reelection, and has had to put big campaign events on hold due to social distancing, there’s been a growing call for the networks to stop carrying these de facto rallies from the briefing room. “If it were up to me, and it’s not, I would stop putting those briefings on live TV—not out of spite, but because it’s misinformation,” MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said Friday. “If the president does end up saying anything true, you can run it as tape, but if he keeps lying like he has been every day on stuff this important, we should—all of us—should stop broadcasting it, honestly. It’s going to cost lives.”
The outcry from MSNBC stars continued during Monday’s briefing. Highly trusted task force member Dr. Anthony Fauci was absent after an interview in which he questioned the president’s grasp of the facts of the crisis, and Attorney General and Trump loyalist William Barr appeared instead. “There is no public benefit to this briefing,” Joe Scarborough tweeted. “The networks should all cut away. Bland pronouncements, the repeating of catch phrases daily, bad medical advice. No science, no doctors, no Fauci. Just Trump’s Roy Cohn.”
Monday’s marathon seems to have been something of an inflection point. All the broadcast and cable networks began carrying it live, but NBC, CBS, and ABC switched to their regular evening newscasts after about 20 minutes, while CNN and MSNBC cut out after the presser had carried on for a little over an hour. Fox News stuck it out until the end.
“Pretty disgraceful,” said White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere, who applauded Fox News “for keeping Americans informed.” (Fox News media critic Howard Kurtz even accused liberals on Tuesday of wanting to “suppress speech” if they’re against airing the briefings live.) “If the White House wants to ask for time on the network, they should make an official request,” CNN said in a statement. ”Otherwise we will make our own editorial decisions.” An MSNBC spokesman said, “We cut away because the information no longer appeared to be valuable to the important ongoing discussion around public health.”
On Tuesday, CBS also issued a statement about its thinking on airing, or not airing, the briefings: “CBS News plans to continue covering briefings whenever possible, but may cut away for regularly scheduled news broadcasts, which many viewers depend on for delivering objective reporting and context on the developments of the day.”
White House correspondents are “split” on the value of the briefings, one of them said. “It’s Trump unleashed every day for 90 minutes, which he’s never done. I actually think letting people see the unfettered Trump is sometimes good,” this reporter said. “I think networks could adapt, and carry them live, but fact-check in real time, or monitor them and show the parts that are about public health and have good info. I don’t think trying to keep him from people because he lies is necessarily the right answer. Cover him aggressively, but let people see what he’s saying.”
For others the question comes down to the amount of guidance and information coming from the public health experts versus how much time Trump spends riffing. “That’s when the judgment changes,” a second White House correspondent said, “and I think you saw the networks making that judgment last night. I don’t think there’s any particular value to hearing him riff for an hour and a half every night, because who he is, and what his personality and character and behavior are like, is pretty well established at this point…. TV networks are in a position right now where they’re trying to serve the country. The way to do that is to help people understand this pandemic, and if he’s not advancing that goal, that’s a reason not to carry it.”