Voters still aren’t getting the full story on Trump. Journalists need to fix that ASAP.
Some Trump stories are completely ignored, others are given the one-and-done treatment instead of sustained in-depth coverage, some are just plain wrong.
-Top-Secret government documents hidden in his bedroom
-Promising to testify but then not testifying in his criminal trial
-Threatening a third term. Again
-Hinting a birth control ban. Again
These are just some of the Trump things that happened recently and none of them got sufficient news coverage. Some Trump stories were completely ignored, others were given the one and done treatment instead of sustained in-depth coverage. A few were just plain wrong. None seem to comprehend the pattern of behavior.
It’s been 9+ years of Trump dominating the country’s politics and in that time there has certainly been smart, impactful coverage of his aberrant campaigns and his disastrous presidency. But that is the exception, not the rule. In fact, I’d argue that the mainstream media coverage of Trump has gotten worse especially in the past year as journalists still try to apply normal reporting practices to an abnormal candidate. When you add in the robust right wing propaganda efforts by Fox and other extremist media outlets, we find ourselves being practically swallowed whole by lies and disinformation.
Here’s a look at some recent examples of reporting missteps:
Trump’s “Unified Reich” A few days ago, Trump posted a video on his social media account this week that contained a full-throated Nazi promise of a “Unified Reich” if he wins in November. This anti-semetic dog whistle is the latest ugly chapter in Trump’s long embrace of nazi-rhetoric and neo-nazis like Holocaust denier and white nationalist Nick Fuentes.
The ‘Reich video’ should be a fairly easy story to cover but some of the press immediately fumbled it. For example, The Associated Press headline “Trump’s social media account shares a campaign video with a headline about a ‘unified Reich’ was one of many that let Trump off the hook. This is part of a frequent press fallback- failing to be absolutely clear about what he’s doing & saying. We have years of evidence that Trump obsessively controls everything that is shared on his social media so headlines that say otherwise are misleading and biased. One story actually did a ‘both sides’ take on this matter as if Trump posting a nazi-inspired video and Biden’s reaction to it were somehow equal. They are not. Also, few media outlets questioned the Trump claim that a random staffer posted a video from a random online account when it was actually from a group that has long partnered with the Trump campaign. But worst of all, the story is basically over and done with when it should still be a big topic of conversation.
President for Life? At last weekend’s NRA convention, Trump went on a meandering, mistake-filled rant that included him freezing on stage for at least 30-seconds. In between promises to roll back gun safety rules, Trump also toyed with the idea of staying in office for a third term. A third term? That should be leading every newscast and on the front page of every news website. Yet these stories from News Nation and the New York Times are typical: Trump threatening a third term is ignored. It’s almost like reporters didn’t actually watch the Trump speech. The stories about this speech as well as many others before it, also do a lot of editing that works to Trump’s advantage. You would not know from reading this Times story just how crazy he sounded.
More Hidden Top Secret Documents: We learned this week that Trump had additional classified, top secret documents squirreled away in his Florida bedroom. I use “learned” loosely here because this story was dramatically undercovered.
Attacking Birth Control: He supports limits on birth control, no he doesn’t. Stop giving every utterance so much credibility. Look instead at what Trump has actually done (ended federal abortion rights; appointed extremist anti-abortion judges), what his supporters are clamoring for (a national abortion ban) and Trump’s pattern of disinformation and flip-flopping on this issue.
Soliciting Bribes from Big Oil: Trump recently promised Big Oil execs that he’d overturn Joe Biden’s climate change rules if they paid him a $1-BILLION bribe. That sure seems like a juicy scandal and part of Trump;s long history of corruption but it, too, was all but ignored by the mainstream press. A review by Media Matters found “over a four-day period, TV news broadcast and cable networks — with the exception of MSNBC — did not cover Trump’s proposition to oil executives. From May 9 through May 12, MSNBC spent 48 minutes discussing Trump’s proposition to Big Oil, with nearly 40% of the coverage airing on Velshi.”
Sleeping in Court: Trump fell asleep during his criminal trial nearly every single day. Yet it really never got any significant news coverage. There was actually more press coverage of Trump describing President Biden as old and tired. That’s just wrong. Only one of these guys is falling asleep at work, and he isn’t named Joe.
‘Promising’ to Testify Then Not: This important fact should have been headline news across the country. It was a key example of Trump saying something but doing the opposite. As media critic Dan Froomkin wrote “We’re getting savvy takes instead of news. Some reports about the trial schedule don’t even mention that it means Trump isn’t going to take the stand.”
Orchestrating the Undermining of the Rule of Law: Defendant Trump was ordered not to defame witnesses, or to direct any else to do so. Yet a revolving guest list of political sycophants showed up to help Trump break his gag order. Some were auditioning for the Veep slot. If that wasn’t weird enough, they were all wearing matching outfits. Even the Speaker of the House, 2nd in line to the presidency, trekked to New York to make a mockery of the rule of law. In this case there was news coverage, but it was largely thoughtless. Why didn’t anyone ask, for example, who paid for all those lawmakers to parade around the courthouse, right?
Lying about Rally Crowds. Again: Reporters should be on high alert whenever Trump and his campaign start talking about crowd size given so many previous lies including that whopper about his 2017 inauguration. But the press screwed up big time in reporting on a recent beachfront Trump rally in the blue state of New Jersey. Trump claimed the crowd was larger than any for New Jersey icon Bruce Springsteen then a city manager told reporters the crowd was 80,000. The AP story about the rally included that inflated number and that’s what got repeated in stories across the country. By the way, the audience total was closer to 20,000 and did not come close to a Springsteen crowd.
Taken together, all of the misfires serve to create a dangerous & false impression of Trump and his campaign. When reporters fail to describe his disjointed rally performances in any detailed fashion or bother to share the actual video of these freakish performances, they are helping promote a fiction about his mental and physical state especially in comparison to his rival President Biden. U.S. President’s are not permitted by law to hold a third term but ignoring Trump’s repeated threats to do just that keeps important information from voters. Normalizing rotating guests at a criminal trial misses the greater threat to our rule of law. Failing to question Trump’s claims about anything including crowd size creates a false impression about support for his campaign.
Journalists are also stuck in a routine of reporting today’s news as a stand alone event instead of looking more deeply into patterns to help tell a more accurate, better story. Look at the stories above. They form a set of distinct patterns. Trump acts as if he is above the law, an autocrat determined to break our democratic norms. Trump is old and tired. Trump is corrupt. Trump embraces authorianism. As new stories come up every day, they should be reported in context, as additional examples of what has already been shown to be true, not as one offs that raise a question about whether that thing might be true.
As we barrel towards the most consequential presidential election in modern time, I hope it’s not too late to fix this problem. It starts with taking what Trump says seriously then reporting it fearlessly with context, clarity and ample fact checks. At the same, paying equal attention to the sitting President of the United States is also important. Only then will voters get the information they urgently need.