Campbell Brown Implores TV News to #TurnOffTrump for One Week
Former TV reporter Campbell Brown — who worked as an anchor on NBC before hosting her own CNN news program — urged her former network colleagues to #TurnOffTrump “for one week,” penning an open letter for Politico imploring media outlets to “stop being complicit in promoting his hateful and harmful demagoguery.”
Brown notes TV news’ “obsession” with the presidential candidate, acknowledging that Donald Trump is “candy for the cameras.” But she also laments the need for TV networks to ensure “no one ever looks away”:
It feels slightly less icky enabling him when you tussle with him, point out his lies and call out his megalomania, but we all know this is about the bottom line. He is damn good for business. As the ratings go up, so does advertising revenue. The cable and network bosses have never been so happy.
Brown argues that “oversaturation is now doing real damage to our democracy,” insisting media outlets that provide a platform to Trump’s demagoguery do so against the public interest. “TV turns him on and only TV can turn him off,” Brown insists.
She says Trump “is devouring” TV news, and suggests and alternative media devoid of Trump’s rhetoric “will feel better and look better to the rest of the word”:
Just imagine what that week might be like without his constant presence in our lives and in our heads: a week when TV news isn’t just fomenting fear; where public life is once more a place where some rules of engagement still matter; where there are places our leaders don’t go; where the media decides there is a line it won’t cross and views it won’t enable; where we can all remember who we are and what this country is about.
He is not a politician. He is not a leader. He is a supreme narcissist, and you can deprive him of the one thing that keeps him going—airtime.
TV friends, you can do this. We have all had enough. Give us a break. Just for one week #TurnOffTrump.
Read Brown’s full op-ed at Politico.
[Images via Wikimedia Commons]
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