One of the most valuable lessons the administration will learn, is that they cannot control the media, or social media. Constantly making false or inaccurate claims, using false data, or more importantly watching something on cable news and then twisting it to fit your own agenda is a dangerous game.

The more accurate and transparent the administration is, the less conspiracy theory talk there will be, the less time it will take to manage the media, the more the administration can focus on what they really want to do. This is a hard lesson to learn, but essential.

Otherwise everything gets stuck in the mire. Too much time denying, too much time correcting, too much time covering up, too much time on internal meetings trying to decide what to do and how to handle it. All that causes stress, wastes time, and drives distrust between staff members as they don’t know who to believe.

Back in December 2016, Dave Davies on NPR Fresh Air, spoke at length to Craig Silverman, Media Editor of BuzzFeed News about fake news. If you didn’t hear it, it’s well worth a listen. It’s especially relevant based on my slow but inexorable move to delete my facebook account.