Letter: Two views of Trump’s visit

I read about President Donald Trump’s visit to the Boeing plant in Charleston in both the Beaufort Gazette and the Charleston Post and Courier. Each covered the event and had front-page, headline stories. After reading both it didn’t sound like the same event.

The Gazette article, from The New York Times, in the first sentence sets the tone with: “President Donald Trump, seeking to reset his stumbling presidency, hit the road for a photo op …”

Nowhere on the first page did it mention the 5,000 employees and guests, and that the event marked the roll-out of the first Boeing 787-10, only that they walked by one. It called the rally “a slickly produced event that erased the lines between political and corporate branding.”

The Charleston writer, by contrast, reported that “the president left behind the combative theatrics of Washington to press his message of American jobs first.”

The Post and Courier actually wrote about the events of the day, who attended, and quoted Boeing employees (positive) and local Democrats (negative). It was a fair and balanced bit of reporting, in my view.

I think the two newspapers were covering the same event, but their underlying objective certainly seemed different.

This story was originally published February 23, 2017 at 8:09 AM with the headline "Letter: Two views of Trump’s visit."