Yes, Trump’s tweets are a distraction – but one people clearly want to read

I have some sympathy with the view that Donald Trump uses his Twitter account to the do the “dead cat strategy” of distracting people and the media from more important issues. I think it is important that the media hold all governments to account – especially those which are shaping up to have authoritarian tendencies.

But, criticising the media for falling for the trap is only half the equation. What gets written about is also a reflection of what is going to get read.

I just sent out a series of tweets about Trump-related stories this morning, and you can see quite clearly from the retweets and faves where the interest – on Twitter at least – lies.

Even explicitly framing the other two stories as “more important” does nothing to dampen the enthusiasm for a good old fashioned “He tweeted WHAT?” story.