Are journalists repeating the same mistakes covering Trump?
How to avoid falling into the same trap
Here we go again. Coverage of Donald Trump is sucking all the oxygen out of the room. And it’s going to continue that way for the foreseeable future.
After Trump was elected in 2016, there was a lot of navel-gazing in journalism circles about “mistakes” in giving Trump too much free publicity. It crowded out the other Republican candidates. Nearly every time Trump spoke, the national news networks took him live to show what new outrageous thing he might say.
Then in the general election campaign, media critics said reporters gave too much attention to the Hillary Clinton email story, perhaps to balance out all the critical stories about Trump.
Here we are eight years later, and Trump is again dominating every news cycle. It’s impossible NOT to cover him because he’s the clear front runner among Republican candidates. Many of the stories concern pigeons coming home to roost as Trump and his minions begin to suffer legal consequences for their years of awful conduct. So it must be covered. The question is how, and how much?
This IS the campaign
The collision between the political calendar and Trump’s need to be in court is unlike anything we’ve seen in American history. CNN commentator Van Jones nailed it when he said, like it or not, “This IS the campaign.” Trump’s court dates, police escorts, appeals, legal filings, social media posts, trials and eventual verdicts is the entirety of the campaign through next November. It’s a shame the American people must go through this, but I place the entire blame at Trump’s feet. Any reasonable person in his position would realize that HE is the problem and would stand down so as not to split the American people so painfully.
The 2023 version of the Hillary email “scandal” comes in two forms: Hunter Biden and Joe Biden’s mental fitness.
I could care less about Hunter Biden. In my view, it’s a non-story. He has never run for any political office, he has never served in any political office, he has no power over anybody in America. He doesn’t affect my life, or yours, one bit. When compared to the non-stop grifting by Trump and his family, it’s small potatoes. Responsible journalists avoided this story for a long time, but now it’s become a fully covered story because Republicans refuse to let it go. I also think journalists are again using it as a false equivalence to all the negative Trump stories. If it were up to me, journalists would ignore the story until there’s something concrete from the special counsel.
President Biden is an 80-year-old man. He doesn’t look or sound like he’s 45. He looks and sounds like he’s 80. His speaking style, which was never robust, comes across as flat. I listened to a speech he made this week. His voice sounds “froggy”, not clear and distinct. He doesn’t shout like other politicians. He doesn’t really emphasize the key words. His delivery is monotone. But what he says is crystal clear and spot on. He’s a long way from quotes I read in a lot of news coverage where Americans say he’s feeble or doddering.
If Biden froze up, like Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell did for the second time Wednesday, then I might be concerned for his mental acuity. If Biden appeared confused about the business at hand like Senator Diane Feinstein has recently, then I might suggest it’s time to move on.
But that’s not what I see and it’s not the story that should be presented to American voters. The Biden administration has been accomplishing a lot, from infrastructure investments to lowering prescription drug prices. Reporters who want to avoid the Trump circus should focus more time on stories that are affecting the American people and stop giving oxygen to stories about Biden’s gait.
How to cover Trump
To return to the key question – how to cover Trump without falling into the same trap as the media did in 2016. To start, I would beg the cable news networks to stop the breathless coverage of every minute detail as the cases wind through the courts. This week, the networks have gone way overboard on the hearing into Mark Meadows’ request to remove his Georgia case to federal court.
Secondly, stop quoting Trump’s incendiary social media statements, such as the one this week (and I have to quote it to make the point), “Today a biased, Trump Hating Judge gave me only a two-month extension, just what our corrupt government wanted, SUPER TUESDAY. I will APPEAL!” Just write that he plans to appeal. Don’t let him get away with all the cheap shots.
Third, every newsroom should start a whiteboard or a spread sheet to track coverage. Every story about Trump should be accompanied by a story of equal length about one of the other candidates. That would prevent Trump from getting 90% of the coverage while everybody else splits the remaining 10%.
Perhaps this is wishful thinking. I know how newsrooms work. They follow the shiny object of the hour. It’s up to news managers to police their content or in 2025, we’re going to be looking back at all the mistakes media made in 2023 and 2024.
This week, I recommend an excellent analysis of the special election in Warren County by Laura Belin.
And Ed Tibbetts column I Got a Letter from the IRS makes a lot of sense.
Please check out some of the other writers in the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative.
Dave, you're spot on. It's time to let Trump fade into prison blues.
I agree with you about President Biden. If he was 60 years old he’d be a heavy favorite for reelection but alas, every day he gets one day older. He can’t change that. He’s likely in better health than the obese, non-exercising, chocolate cake-eating Trump but he doesn’t APPEAR to be.
And as for coverage, I totally agree but for more restrained coverage to occur, news editors and directors will have to resist the temptation (cat nip) for eyeballs. A column header that says “Trump” unfortunately gets more readership that one that blares infrastructure or Ukraine, akin to how stories about a gruesome train derailment or axe murder are hard to resist. Also, the media has to get over the notion that they have to be even-handed in coverage…a jaywalking ticket of one candidate shouldn’t be covered with the same intensity as the armed robbery by another.