APPSMore than 84,000 people have signed a petition calling on news broadcasters to stop providing live coverage of the White House’s briefings on the coronavirus outbreak.
Accusing President Donald Trump of using each briefing as a “live campaign rally,” the petition, which has been published on MoveOn.org, asks CNN, ABC, CBS NBC, NPR and Fox News to consider whether it is necessary to livestream the COVID-19 press conferences in full.
“President Trump is blatantly using the news organizations’ extensive, live coverage to freely campaign for a second term,” the petition claims. “It is wrong and dangerous to provide so much unfettered airtime to someone who is happily, shamelessly spreading terrible, damaging misinformation that is already costing fellow Americans their lives.”
Rather than broadcasting live coverage of the White House’s COVID-19 briefings, the MoveOn petition, started by Julie Rochman, asks broadcasters to monitor the briefings instead “and have your anchors and correspondents quickly share appropriately edited valuable accurate parts.”
The “valuable accurate parts,” the petition states would be the statements coming “from medical experts.”
Cutting out Trump’s own comments, the petition asserts, would “leave the President’s insults, false braggadocio and outright lies on the editing room floor, where they belong.”
“Please stop covering the President’s daily live campaign rally (thinly disguised as a coronavirus ‘news conference’),” the petition implores. “There is no need to do so.”
In the days since the petition was launched, it has quickly garnered support, gaining tens of thousands of signatures since three days ago, when it had just 10.
“Stop giving this tyrant free publicity that is also dangerous to the public,” one of the petition’s signatories wrote.
“All he does is lie and insult the people who actually are doing something constructive. He needs a Time Out,” another said.
Despite criticism of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak, the president has played a key role in the White House’s briefings on COVID-19, often fielding questions on the U.S.’s response to the outbreak, including the country’s rollout of testing and access to personal protective equipment.
In a briefing on Monday, the president took centerstage, responding to a question about why the U.S. was not testing as many people per capita as other countries by asserting that the U.S. was “very much on par” with other nations.
“We have vast farmlands. We have vast areas where they don’t have much of a problem. In some cases, they have no problem whatsoever,” he said. “We have done more tests…I didn’t talk about per capita. We have done more tests, by far, than any country in the world, by far.”
Further, Trump said: “Our testing is also better than any country in the world. And when you look at that, as simple as that looks, that’s something that’s a game changer, and every country wants that. Every country.”
“So rather than asking a question like that,” Trump continued, admonishing the journalist, “you should congratulate the people that have done this testing, because we inherited—this administration inherited a broken system, a system that was obsolete, a system that didn’t work. It was okay for a tiny, small group of people, but once you got beyond that, it didn’t work.”
Since the briefings began, there have been repeated calls for the White House to keep politics out of the briefings, with Scott Dworkin, the co-founder of the Democratic Coalition, being an outspoken critic of Trump’s involvement in the press conferences.
In a string of tweets on Monday, Dworkin called on broadcasters to stop airing Trump’s comments, with the hashtag “#StopAiringTrump”.
“I’m watching Trump’s press conference so you don’t have. Instead of watching, please let all networks know we don’t want a pathologically lying politician’s spin on coronavirus,” he wrote. “We want doctors talking about facts and science. Period. No more Trump propaganda.”
Newsweek has contacted the creator of the MoveOn.org petition, Dworkin, the Trump administration and Trump’s campaign team for comment.
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