Missing the Mark
This story from Axios Charlotte was either a cheap bid for clicks or revealed a basic ignorance of how state government works.
The headline: “Cooper, Robinson have no record of speaking in days before, after or during Helene.”
It began like “Breaking News” on CNN: “North Carolina’s governor and his next-in-command seemingly had zero communication in the days before, during and after the deadliest hurricane in state history.”
Slow down here.
In North Carolina, lieutenant governors may be next in line, but they’re most definitely not “next-in-command.”
They aren’t like Vice Presidents. They’re elected independently of the governor. They have separate constitutional duties. They can be and often are of opposite parties and opposite political philosophies.
And does anyone seriously think Governor Roy Cooper should have turned to Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson to deal with a crisis the magnitude of Hurricane Helene?
If Cooper had, Democrats and Republicans alike would have justly questioned his sanity.
Robinson had long before shown himself undeserving of public trust and responsibility.
When the hurricane hit, he was busy ducking questions about his online habits, and Republicans were ducking being seen with him.
Then he was absent from the Council of State’s deliberations and decisions on disaster relief. Instead, he posed at disaster sites for photo ops and social media hits. Instead of helping, he spread lies and misinformation.
The story reflects a serious problem in journalism today, summed up by Oliver Burkeman, long-time columnist for The Guardian, in his book Meditations for Mortals.
He wrote that “a consequence of the online ‘attention economy’ (is that) the truly valuable commodity – the thing from which advertisers and social media firms and many news organizations stand to make their money – isn’t the news itself, but your attention.”
Getting your attention outweighs giving you information.
If this story got your attention, you got bad information.
Yahoo photo: Robinson photo op after Helene.
Missing the Mark
This story from Axios Charlotte was either a cheap bid for clicks or revealed a basic ignorance of how state government works.
The headline: “Cooper, Robinson have no record of speaking in days before, after or during Helene.”
It began like “Breaking News” on CNN: “North Carolina’s governor and his next-in-command seemingly had zero communication in the days before, during and after the deadliest hurricane in state history.”
Slow down here.
In North Carolina, lieutenant governors may be next in line, but they’re most definitely not “next-in-command.”
They aren’t like Vice Presidents. They’re elected independently of the governor. They have separate constitutional duties. They can be and often are of opposite parties and opposite political philosophies.
And does anyone seriously think Governor Roy Cooper should have turned to Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson to deal with a crisis the magnitude of Hurricane Helene?
If Cooper had, Democrats and Republicans alike would have justly questioned his sanity.
Robinson had long before shown himself undeserving of public trust and responsibility.
When the hurricane hit, he was busy ducking questions about his online habits, and Republicans were ducking being seen with him.
Then he was absent from the Council of State’s deliberations and decisions on disaster relief. Instead, he posed at disaster sites for photo ops and social media hits. Instead of helping, he spread lies and misinformation.
The story reflects a serious problem in journalism today, summed up by Oliver Burkeman, long-time columnist for The Guardian, in his book Meditations for Mortals.
He wrote that “a consequence of the online ‘attention economy’ (is that) the truly valuable commodity – the thing from which advertisers and social media firms and many news organizations stand to make their money – isn’t the news itself, but your attention.”
Getting your attention outweighs giving you information.
If this story got your attention, you got bad information.
Yahoo photo: Robinson photo op after Helene.