The real danger Michael Flynn presents at this point
Immediately after Steve Bannon was indicted for contempt of Congress, Michael Flynn announced that he intends to cooperate with the January 6th Committee. If he changes his mind, that’s fine, he can share a cell with Bannon. If Flynn does testify, it’ll be Christmas morning for the committee, because he’s derangedly unstable enough that it should be easy to bait him into going off script and incriminating himself and a whole lot of other Trump people. And failing that, the committee may be able to ring him up for perjury, because he’s constantly lying.
That’s the good news when it comes to Michael Flynn. The bad news is that even with this crucial investigative and legal process playing out, the media is still acting as Flynn’s publicist. This weekend he made a simplistically offensive remark about how there should only be one religion in America, and major media outlets all tripped over each other in the rush to give him free publicity for it.
Liberal outlets used it as an excuse to lament about the “danger” and the “damage” that Flynn is doing to the “rule of law” (these are the ratings-friendly buzz words you hear on MSNBC over and over again, every day, with a different right wing figure inserted as the reason why).
So-called “neutral” news outlets (including Business Insider, Yahoo, and The Hill) all put Flynn’s remarks about religion in their headlines, as if it were just another political view, and not the deranged ramblings of a broken madman. These news outlets know that right wingers click on these kinds of headlines out of excitement, liberals hate-click on these kinds of headlines because they’re (rightly) outraged, and everyone else clicks on these kinds of headlines just to see what the fuss is all about.
And because liberal and neutral news outlets are still promoting Flynn as some kind of celebrity villain, right wing news outlets like Fox News are still seizing the opportunity to nab easy ratings simply by praising him.
So the media – left, right, and center – is still giving this batshit crazy traitor Michael Flynn free publicity at every turn. Flynn appears to be so far gone psychologically, it’s not even clear if he’s saying these things specifically to bait the media into giving him publicity, or if he’s just on autopilot at this point. Either way, Flynn has a bigger platform than ever for promoting his deranged views, treasonous anti-government stances, and conspiratorial lies.
It’s all enough to raise some concern about just how the media will portray Michael Flynn’s testimony if he does end up testifying to the January 6th Committee in public hearings. Even as Flynn rattles off pro-Trump lies about the 2020 election while committee members work to trip him up and get him to confess to his January 6th crimes, what will the headlines even look like? Business Insider might say “Flynn spars with January 6th Committee.” The Hill might say “Flynn reiterates view that Trump won in 2020.” And even if Flynn’s testimony is disastrous for him, MSNBC will likely portray Flynn as having won the day, so it can scare viewers into staying tuned in by lamenting about the “danger” and the “damage.”
The trouble with Michael Flynn is that he’s great for ratings and page views, but only if he’s portrayed in a certain way. That means the media risks throwing revenue away if it covers his January 6th testimony in an accurate and responsible way, instead of just automatically going with the narratives about Flynn that it knows are guaranteed to drive ratings and page views. The real “danger” and “damage” here is coming from the media itself. That won’t change until audiences stop responding to these kinds of prefabricated narratives, and instead begin pushing back against them and demanding accurate narratives instead.
