Who will read the second word of the news?

In the delicious film New moon, Cary Grant tries to convince his best reporter (and ex-wife) not to leave the newspaper she runs in favor of a family life with her new husband. In a famous scene, Rosalind Russell's character reads him the story she has written and he scolds her: "Wait a minute, wait a minute, aren't you going to mentionThe Post? Doesn't the newspaper deserve recognition? She replies that she included him in the second paragraph and he jumps up and says: "Nobody reads the second paragraph!" So we see that the ability to sustain attention was already a concern around 1940. Only now it seems, not even apparently. Donald Trump's threat of a complaint against theNew York Timesand CNN for publishing a story suggesting that the US attack on Iran's nuclear facilities had been merely a setback lasting a few months and not the total destruction of the uranium enrichment program, as the president had been selling. The source of the information was an intelligence report with preliminary conclusions. And preliminary was the second word in the newspaper's report. Never mind. Trump didn't like the headline and considered the published pieces "unpatriotic," even though they are true and the report exists.

For a president of a country to waste time muddling two media outlets over whether a story favors him or not is absurd. The benefit he seeks isn't even to defend his military attack. Rather, it's to spread a lethal notion: that everyone lies and, therefore, no shared narrative is possible. If the existence of the press is fundamentally questioned, the powers that be have a free hand to do as they please. Trump may look like a donkey, with his hooliganism, but he's not a donkey.