[brandon272]

You need a source to acknowledge that a President's words have impact and that speaking ignorantly and off the cuff on medical topics can lead to misunderstanding and dangerous decision making by the general public?

There's a reason why Reckitt Benckiser Group quickly issued a statement after Trump's claims, imploring people not to consume "through injection, ingestion or any other route" any of their products.

https://www.rb.com/media/news/2020/april/improper-use-of-dis...

[austingulati]

Yeah, and, in my opinion, the reason why Reckitt Benckiser Group quickly issued a statement after Trump's claims is as much the media as Trump himself. The media had an opportunity to educate people on "proprietary methods of administering intermittent ultraviolet (UV) A light via a novel endotracheal medical device" to which Trump is referring and instead ran stories about Lysol. Would we even be talking about Lysol if they had led with Healight? I won't claim to know the answer to this question because I don't but it is worth considering that the answer is "no".

Edit: just to combat the obvious response, would we even be talking about Lysol if Trump had not made those comments? Obviously, no. Two wrongs don't make a right

[brandon272]

Having watched the unedited press conference, there's zero evidence that he was talking about the Healight. If he were, they have had nearly 24 hours to clarify that he was referring to that. It's not the media's role to search out and bolster rational explanations for the President's seemingly irrational claims.

The Healight also offers no explanation for his "injecting disinfectant" claims, which were separate from the UV light claims. The term "disinfectant" among the public is most commonly used to indicate household disinfectant chemicals. So when the President muses about "injecting disinfectant", why would it be the media's role to then go and hunt for explanations that actually make sense from a medical perspective?

[austingulati]

I would say that there is "little evidence" that he was talking about Healight because his sentences are barely coherent but it does appear to be that he is referring to "injecting" UV light to "disinfect" the lungs which is what Healight is doing when you get past the exact words that I quoted.

Yes, I believe it is the media's responsibility to be more intelligent than the President in this case, which honestly shouldn't be very hard. Time and time again they are lowering themselves to Trump's level presumably to soak up that sweet sweet ad revenue

[brandon272]

You acknowledge that the President speaks in "barely coherent" sentences. And that he's not very intelligent.

That's the real problem, here. That's the real story.

If we view the media's role as nothing more than taking Trump's drivel and turning it into teachable moments or trying to find a positive spin on it, not only does it basically position the media as a PR arm of whomever the current administration is, by doing so it fails in its duty to inform the public about what is actually going on in the White House, and what the President is actually saying.

A key role of the fourth estate is to hold the President to account. That is incompatible with your view that they need to be a booster of the President in the name of "intelligence" or elevation of the dialogue.

Edit: I will also add that I see now that Trump is claiming that his talk yesterday of UV light and injecting disinfectants was "sarcasm".

[austingulati]

I don't think you understand my argument. That's fine, I haven't been articulating it very well, let me give it another shot.

> That's the real problem, here. That's the real story.

Is it? Is Donald Trump's incorrect use of the word disinfectant the most important thing happening in the world right now?

> If we view the media's role as nothing more than taking Trump's drivel and turning it into teachable moments or trying to find a positive spin on it, not only does it basically position the media as a PR arm of whomever the current administration is, by doing so it fails in its duty to inform the public about what is actually going on in the White House, and what the President is actually saying.

I have a few points here:

1. I don't think that the media needs to put a "positive spin". As I mentioned, the preferable response in my opinion is something along the lines of "Trump is wrong, but here is whats right" and then quickly move on. Instead, they put a negative spin on things, connecting Trump's words to Lysol because it better matched their incentives, which went viral and made this the biggest news story of the week. I'm sure some Trump supporter is going to inject Lysol because that's now what Trump said even though its not really what he said

2. The media IS in many ways a PR arm of whomever the current administration is. The government has a lot of control over what the media says as do many other powerful/wealthy individuals/organizations in this country. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

3. By criticizing Trump so often, the media leads many to believe that #2 is not the truth. But, the vast majority of criticism of the current administration is trivial in nature. Trump incorrectly using the word "disinfectant" is not the most important thing happening in the country this week. Not even close.

4. As a result of #3, the Trump administration has basically free rein to do any of the real evil things that the US government does on a regular basis without fear of scrutiny. The media is too busy talking about "disinfectant" to talk about any real issues. And the general public (edit: Democrats) trusts that the media is holding the Trump administration to a high standard as a result of #3. In terms of "real evil things", I think the media should be investigating the current bailouts and injection of liquidity in financial markets. But, the persons/organizations getting rich off that (at the tax payers expense), are the same powerful persons/organizations that have control over the media (again, see Chomsky).

All in all, I see the focus on this disinfectant as one of a long series of smoke screens to give the appearance of keeping the White House in check. In reality, they are just polluting our brains with all this talk about Lysol. Instead, they should have just said, maybe Trump is talking about this UV light therapy, and then moved on to something more important, instead of creating this whole hullabaloo about Lysol that really is not important in the grand scheme of things.

This is not a new pattern - this has been happening since Trump took office. The media uproar about what dumb things Trump said each week isn't real scrutiny.

Another way to look at it is that Trump intentionally says stupid things often to keep the media pre-occupied with that and distracted from the real things his administration is doing. In other words, he is "controlling the news cycle". I think this is a valid interpretation of the events although I don't give Trump that much credit and I think we should be looking closer at the media because they're going to be relevant much longer than Trump will. But, if this strikes a chord with you at all, consider this question: perhaps the media should not be taking the bait? The sarcasm comment aligns better with this theory. He got what he wanted and can now backtrack on his statements

PS. I realize that the argument in this comment is far from my argument in previous comments. It took some time for more to develop my thoughts. I'll be more careful next time. I would apologize for wasting time but I think I already paid the price in terms of downvotes

PPS. Summarizing my argument one last time before I put a lid on this: it seems to me that this whole disinfectant debacle is a big waste of time and the media could be doing better by educating people on treatment options to keep them optimistic or investigating real bad shit that the Trump administration is doing to make this country a better place. Thanks for your time, I definitely learned a lot from this argument and appreciate your participation even if we don't see eye to eye on this issue.

[Alex3917]

From the HN guidelines:

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

[notahacker]

The statement we are supposed to find the strongest plausible interpretation of is this one

So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous - whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light and I think you said that hasn't been checked but you're going to test it. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside of the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you're going to test that too. Sounds interesting. And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it'd be interesting to check that'

I don't think anybody can plausibly claim this incoherent stream of verbiage is an attempt to raise ultraviolet irradiation of blood as a possibility, particularly not in the context of a discussion which instead focused on how sunlight weakens the virus and isopryl alcohol kills it within one minute. And especially not now the person who made that statement has walked it back and said it was 'sarcastic'

HN guidelines don't require HNers to abandon their critical faculties.