Ok, one piece at a time. First, what is "spin"? From https://www.thoughtco.com/spin-communication-1691988:userque wrote: I'm not ignoring the rest of your post, I’m just trying to respond to one ‘issue’ or point at a time.
I asked to see where the main media has spun the story. You’ve provided some links, but can you quote the ‘spin’ parts?
"Spin is a contemporary term for a form of propaganda that relies on deceptive methods of persuasion. In politics, business, and elsewhere, spin is often characterized by exaggeration, euphemisms, inaccuracies, half-truths, and excessively emotional appeals."
For the sake of simplicity, I suggest we use the above definition as "spin".
Now, from the CNN article I quoted before:
- "Trump's comments made his extravagant claims..."
- "Trump's bizarre performance..."
- "The surreal nature of the spectacle later prompted CNN's Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta to reflect on air: "This is sort of becoming President Trump's traveling medicine show.""
- "So it's easy to mock Trump. But he also has the world's largest megaphone, appears to be openly mulling a treatment that could cause people to poison themselves if they adopted it and has a record of deflecting from the grave reality of the virus to peddle optimism that may not be matched by the facts. He also seems to have little time for the rigorous clinical testing and factual deduction that is at the heart of generations of advances in clinical science and is the bedrock of ethical medicine."
- "Trump's comments horrified medical experts"
- "The latest medical follies..."
- "But the last sentence of his comment shows how he advances a wild theory but then gives himself some cover." (referring to a statement Trump made in Feb - was the statement truly "wild", or was it optimistic given the information available a the time?)
These are all opinions, emotional appeals, and/or pure conjecture, which have no place in a supposedly unbiased and fact-based article. These are used in an effort to deceptively manipulate the reader's understanding and opinion of what actually happened. That is the first part of the "spin".
Next, throughout the article the author conveyed quotes from CEOs and medical experts saying that disinfectant shouldn't be injected or used to try to kill the virus inside the body. While that's true enough given the current level of technology, it's also clear that this is not what the President intended with his statements. Yet, the quotes from CEOs and experts make it seem as if this is exactly what the President meant, and they went about refuting the idea wholesale. This is presenting a half-truth and then using experts to rebut it as if it were the whole truth, which is the other half of "spinning" the story.
Now, I'm not saying that the right-wing media doesn't do this kind of thing. All of media needs to be held to a higher standard. But I see it worse on the left than I do on the right.
that saw the briefing, or was present at the briefing, knows Trump wasn't being sarcastic.