The Washington Post put a flawed headline on an online post Monday morning about statements Donald Trump had made in television interviews minutes earlier.
The error was asserting coherence where there was only incoherence.
Trump's vaguely malicious innuendo was bad enough. The paper needn't have tried against all odds to make the innuendo less vague.
The headline declared: "Donald Trump suggests President Obama was involved with Orlando shooting."
At the time I linked the piece on social media but said the headline was "imprecise." Shortly after, as it happened, the Post toned down the headline, but still not enough, to say, "Donald Trump seems to connect Obama to Orlando shooting."
"Seems" is just a wiggle word.
The problem is that no amount of parsing and diagramming and studied consideration could produce clarity in the drive-by malignancy that Trump actually rambled, which went as follows: "Look, we're led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he's got something else in mind. And the something else in mind--you know, people can't believe it. People cannot, they cannot believe that President Obama is acting the way he acts and can't even mention the words 'radical Islamic terrorism.' There's something going on. It's inconceivable. There's something going on."
So what, exactly, was Trump alleging? I can only refer you to his defining word: "Something."
It was that Barack Obama was so bad in this "something" that people couldn't believe it.
My headline, perhaps too long for the space, would have been "Trump says people can't believe President Obama is doing in regard to Muslims whatever it is they think but can't believe he may be doing."
If the editors insisted on a shorter, one-line headline, I'd have gone with "Trump mouths words."
Later in the day Trump announced he was revoking the Post's credentials to cover his campaign. That amounted to a badge of honor for the newspaper and, if permanent, probably will improve the paper's coverage of his campaign.
Daily newspapers don't really need to tag along anymore, especially with Trump, whose every utterance gets broadcast live by the Pavlovian cable news networks.
The story the next morning will be the fallout to whatever outrage Trump uttered on live television the day before.
Reporters' time wasted on stenography on the actual trail with Trump--or sitting in a press pen rather than the public bleachers--could be better spent working the phones in pursuit of reporter-driven and editor-driven angles about the broader issues and implications of Trump's frightful candidacy.
For example, on the day after the revocation of credentials, the Post produced an online piece far more significant than a simple account of yet another stream of on-stage consciousness from Trump.
It reported that Republican leaders were concerned anew that Trump's response to the Orlando shooting had harmed his candidacy, making Americans less comfortable with the idea of him in the Oval Office in times of great alarm.
It reported that House Republican leaders were reiterating that Trump's proposed Muslim ban was un-American and would actually harm national-security interests by inflaming the Muslim world and helping ISIS in its recruitment.
If a Post reporter needed to be tailing anyone that morning, it was President Obama, who was delivering a speech, an indignant tirade, against Trump.
Obama dismissed Trump's rhetoric as "yapping" that was perilous to the country's foreign-policy and national-security interests. He was making the same points as those the Post was reporting from leading Republicans.
A great daily newspaper can keep up with what Trump says by punching the power button of a remote-control device connected to a television set mounted on the newsroom wall. CNN, Fox, MSNBC--they're just killing time until they can devote their airtime to gavel-to-gavel coverage of the car wreck of Trump's next public spectacle.
A great daily newspaper's editors can then assemble and prioritize the inevitable absurdities and outrages it just heard, then send reporters out to interview key sources about the nature and extent of the ensuing threat to the republic.
It won't need a set of hung-around-neck credentials. It'll only need to be more precise in its headlines.
Actually, I have in mind a standing headline, suitable daily, saying, "Get a load of what Trump said this time."
------------v------------
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 06/16/2016