Chet Czarniak

Opinion contributor

Grizzled journalists have a saying: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”

While that expression dates back decades, we sadly could alter it for these trying times: “If the president says something, check it out.”

That hit home Sunday evening when President Donald Trump led the daily coronavirus Task Force briefing by advocating for hydroxychloroquine, which most of us now know is a drug commonly used to treat malaria but has shown signs of possible efficacy in combating COVID-19. It’s in a trial stage needed to prove whether it works.

The president’s advice to the nation, in recommending that people with the disease or even fearful of contracting it seek out hydroxychloroquine: “What do you have to lose?”

Perhaps, plenty. The drug, now available as a generic, has been in use for decades and in the wrong circumstances, can have deadly side effects. That’s why the president’s own medical experts are cautious.

Hydroxychloroquine pitch a watershed

There’s danger when the president brushes aside experts such as Dr. Anthony Fauci in his salesman-like pitch about the potential of the drug.

Is that danger great enough that the networks — both over-the-air and cable news outlets — have an obligation to reconsider broadcasting the president’s coronavirus briefings live?

Until last Sunday evening, I said no.

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That opinion was formed over more than 40 years as a journalist, including 30 years at USA TODAY. I worked through two disasters — as a reporter during the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979 and as an editor in the 9/11 terror attacks in 2001 — and have viewed the tumult of those events and the fearful, cautionary and hopeful words of leaders from mayors to governors to presidents.

Through those decades, I believed there were certain basics, and one of those is that if the president spoke at a news conference, a briefing or anywhere else about a topic of national urgency, the media have a responsibility to go live with sound and video. Let the president speak and let his countrymen hear him.

I maintained that opinion in the current climate, even when President Trump would flare up and berate reporters and their questions. Even when he would contradict statements he just made. Even when he would run the briefings as episodic TV and delay getting to the point and relevance of any new information.

It’s the president. He should have an open mic. If you don’t like it, turn the channel or the dial.

Doctor answers key question:What do you have to lose taking hydroxychloroquine for coronavirus? Potentially your life.

But then came Sunday. Watching him live, talking about how Americans should embrace hydroxychloroquine in a way that offered so much hope and no mention of potential downside, I changed my mind.

If not by direct appeal, then certainly by inference, he was putting the presidential stamp on a medication that has not been fully vetted for the intended purpose of the president’s pitch. And broadcasters were dutifully putting that message out as his pitch continued.

A danger too big to air live

For sure, we hope the president is spot-on correct. It could be a lifesaver. And it is commendable that the administration has rounded up 29 million doses of the medication in case its effectiveness is proved and the risks documented.

The problem is we don’t know if it works at all, let alone well enough to justify the risks. Any TV commercial we’ve seen for a medication devotes some time to potential adverse side effects. Think about your own medications or those of family and friends and some of the side effects they might have faced.

The president put that aside Sunday evening. He was full-on selling hydroxychloroquine. The inference of his words was clear. “What do you have to lose?”

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The media has an obligation to transmit the words of the president, but it has a greater responsibility to its audience — particularly its safety — and the facts as we know them.

The unvetted words of a president can be just as dangerous as the broadcast of unseemly scenes of death, violence and other tragedies, which the media will often avoid or caution before showing.

The problem in a live briefing is that anchors or reporters cannot just jump in with appropriate disclaimers and facts. And we all know — because we’ve all done it — that we sometimes hear what we want to hear or infer something without the support of facts or data. It also does little to change the perception even when the president proclaims, “What do I know? I’m not a doctor.”

He’s already made clear his beliefs, from the biggest pulpit in the world. And that is a real and present danger — a danger too big for journalists to continue to broadcast this president live during a time of national emergency.

Chet Czarniak is a former executive editor at USA TODAY, specializing in digital platforms. Follow him on Twitter: @Chetc