The media must stop helping Trump market misery
Journalists don’t have to repeat the regime’s cutesy nicknames for its corrupt campaigns
Homeland Security’s campaign to terrorize immigrants is a daunting logistical task, but it’s also – to put it lightly – a PR challenge. Americans armed with iPhones are sharing videos of federal agents’ daily cruelty, and the Trump regime is fighting back with slick videos and snarky social media posts.
It’s an information war, and Homeland Security has several goals when it uses its channels to market human misery:
It wants to show mighty men with big guns looking “cool” to help recruit new agents.
It wants to terrify immigrants generally to induce them to “re-migrate.”
It wants to create an image of invincibility so decent people will feel it’s useless to try to defend their neighbors.
To a large extent, ICE and Border Patrol bypass traditional media with their messaging. They don’t like it when journalists document the tear-gassing of neighborhoods, report on clergy members being shot with pepper balls, and cite statistics that blow up the regime’s lie that it’s targeting “the worst of the worst.”
But in another way the press undercuts all that good work and even voluntarily amplifies the regime’s spin. This happens in a seemingly small way that actually has a big impact on public perception when the government invents cutesy nicknames for its detention facilities and operations and the media then embrace that branding.
The feds give detention facilities names like Alligator Alcatraz in Florida, Speedway Slammer in Indiana and Cornhusker Clink in Nebraska. They label operations against immigrants as Midway Blitz in Chicago, Charlotte’s Web in North Carolina, and Catahoula Crunch in New Orleans.
The news outlets aren’t inaccurate in using these names, but they’re certainly serving as government tools when they highlight them in headlines. The latest Homeland Security outrage should not be treated as if it’s a new flavor of Ben & Jerry’s.
These nicknames might amuse MAGA, but they’re offensive to many others. One of the apparent goals is to co-opt our cultural touchstones, as foreign occupiers like to do:
Chicagoans (such as me) hate the Midway Blitz nickname, as it sullies the good name of the Chicago Bears’ “Monsters of the Midway.”
The Charlotte’s Web nickname horrifies lovers of children’s literature, since it stomps on the positivity of E.B. White’s book. White’s granddaughter said the author “certainly didn’t believe in masked men, in unmarked cars, raiding people’s homes and workplaces without IDs or summons.”
Catahoula refers to Louisiana’s official state dog, a spotted canine that displays “tenacity and grit,” according to Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino, who posted on social media about the nickname. There was blowback: One social media poster said, “My Catahoula, Jethro, is not amused.” Another, noting reports that the operation’s original name was Swamp Sweep, wrote, “The initials SS hit too close to home.”
The news media don’t need to go along with this playful nicknaming. They could stay generic and refer to the “immigration crackdown” in a particular area. They could – and should – refuse to be manipulated.
Government spinmeisters have learned a lot since the 1950s, when the Eisenhower administration actually called its immigration crackdown Operation Wetback. Propagandistic positivity became the rule. In the 1980s, the United States unveiled its Peacekeeper nuclear missile. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, based on the White House’s lies about weapons of mass destruction, was called Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The Trump regime has experienced limited success in getting the news media to buy into its nicknames for military operations, such as Midnight Hammer for the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities and Southern Spear for the illegal attacks on boats in Latin America.
But MAGA branding has been quite effective on other Trump initiatives.
For example, there’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA), which is doing the opposite of what its name promises. Trump and his Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. are undermining a marvel of modern medicine, vaccines, and vandalizing the nation’s medical research system.
Yet major media – including the Associated Press, NPR, PBS, CNN, and CBS – use “Make America Healthy Again” in headlines. It’s human nature that when people see that phrase over and over, they’ll begin to think the government’s campaign will make America healthy again. That’s a victory for marketing and a defeat for the truth.
It’s possible to report on MAHA without amplifying the branding. The New York Times hasn’t put the full phrase in a headline since May, preferring to use more generic and spin-free phrases such as a “report on children’s health.”
Another major Republican marketing success involved their One Big, Beautiful Bill. While some news commentators have used the name sarcastically, others have presented it with straight faces. Yes, the legislation was officially known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” But so what? It was a catch-all bill with lots of aspects. Responsible journalists avoided the propagandistic label and called it the “megabill.”
In August, after the measure was approved, Trump admitted that the name was a marketing scheme: “I’m not going to use the term ‘great, big, beautiful.’ That was good for getting it approved, but it’s not good for explaining to people what it’s all about.”
Trump doesn’t know much about public policy or human decency, but he sure knows about marketing – and manipulation of the media.
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Can't agree with you more on this, Mark. I cringe every time I hear one of these childish labels repeated. I despise most advertising and marketing (I know, necessary evils but still... ) so for them to come up with cute names for actions that are reprehensible and cruel is just another of the thousand reasons to hate this movement.