https://www.metafilter.com/177848/Truth-Sandwiches
How the media should respond to Trump’s lies: a linguist explains how Trump uses lies to divert attention from the “big truths.” "George Lakoff, a professor of linguistics and cognitive science at UC Berkeley ... recently published an article laying out the media’s dilemma. Trump’s 'big lie' strategy, he argues, is to 'exploit journalistic convention by providing rapid-fire news events for reporters to chase.' According to Lakoff, the president uses lies to divert attention from the 'big truths,' or the things he doesn’t want the media to cover. This allows Trump to create the controversies he wants and capitalize on the outrage and confusion they generate, while simultaneously stoking his base and forcing the press into the role of 'opposition party.'"
nterview with Brian Stelter on CNN's Reliable Sources: George Lakoff: 'The media is not doing its job'
George Lakoff has a warning for the national news media: Don't adopt President Trump's distorted framing of events.
Lakoff is a well-known linguist and a staunch critic of Trump. On... "Reliable Sources" podcast, he urged reporters to not just repeat or fact-check what the president says about topics like traveling migrants. Instead, he said, they should come up with new framings that put facts front and center.
"Reporters are trained to adopt the language of the people they're reporting on. And in this case you have to not do that. You have to resist it," Lakoff told Brian Stelter. "You have to ask what is the truth and tell the truth," he said.
He has previously written about how Trump turns "words into weapons" and has urged journalists to state facts first; then share Trump's falsehoods; then repeat the facts again. A "truth sandwich," so to speak.
Instead of Trump’s propaganda, how about a nice ‘truth sandwich’?
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