Because the 2024 election cycle was ramping up final fall, I anxious that the information media was making among the identical errors as 2016 and risked normalizing Donald Trump, a twice-impeached president going through 4 felony indictments. My concern was that normalcy bias would trigger the mainstream media to deal with the aspiring autocrat as a standard candidate and provides a man recognized for mendacity about just about the whole lot—from crowd sizes to sexual encounters to winning elections—a platform to lie much more.
Although the media has absolutely discovered some classes from the 2016 cycle—a interval by which Trump enjoyed billions of {dollars} in free publicity—reporters, pundits, and TV producers proceed to fall into outdated patterns, like letting Trump play project editor. On Thursday, in a determined try to wrestle again the information cycle from Kamala Harris, Trump gave a protracted, rambling press convention chock-full of lies, distortions, and grievances that was carried stay on cable information. “It was 2016 another time,” bemoaned Lawrence O’Donnell that night time on MSNBC, the place I additionally function a contributor.
At one level, Trump compared his January 6 crowd measurement to the gathering for Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech on the Nationwide Mall and mentioned that his 2024 opponent—a former prosecutor, lawyer normal, senator, and sitting vp—was “not smart enough to do a news conference.” As unhinged and offensive as this spectacle could have been, it was additionally efficient in getting the media to speak about how Harris, who has taken questions from reporters on the marketing campaign path, hasn’t executed a wide-ranging presser since ascending to the highest of the Democratic ticket in latest weeks, or sat for a substantive interview.
The editorial board of Rupert Murdoch’s New York Put up urged Trump “had it proper” when he mentioned at his presser that Harris “received’t even do interviews with pleasant individuals, as a result of she will’t do higher than Biden,” whereas The Washington Put up’s editorial board credited Trump for taking questions at a information convention. Trump’s presser was cited in a slew of latest tales on Harris’s media technique, together with Axios, the Associated Press, and The New York Times, which featured the headline, “Kamala Harris Isn’t Giving Interviews. Any Questions?”
Whereas it’s true Trump has taken questions, what’s the worth on this train if a lot of his solutions are baseless or simply ridiculous? “A group of NPR reporters and editors reviewed the transcript of his information convention and located no less than 162 misstatements, exaggerations, and outright lies in 64 minutes,” noted the information outlet. “That’s greater than two a minute. It’s a surprising quantity for anybody—and much more problematic for an individual operating to steer the free world.”
Ought to Harris do interviews? Positive, however the media needs to be very cautious of taking cues from a bad-faith actor who occurs to be operating in opposition to her. Or from Trump’s sidekick, JD Vance, who tried trolling Harris final week on the tarmac by telling reporters how she “refuses to reply questions from the media.” Whereas the Trump group tries to border Harris as dodging media scrutiny, it’s not as if Trump is sitting down for powerful questions from, say, Rachel Maddow. As an alternative, he spent a pair hours Monday night time in a pleasant, albeit glitchy, conversation with billionaire supporter Elon Musk.
One of many main modifications in American politics since 2016 is the plummeting public belief within the mainstream media. A part of this may be blamed on Trump, who demonized the press because the enemy of the individuals, main his base to hate us. However a part of this will also be blamed on the media itself, which has made readers and viewers writ giant upset by a few of our worst tendencies: There’s the issue of headlines usually repeating Trump’s lies, and even these prepared to provide the aspiring autocrat the good thing about the doubt. Many articles appear unable to know the stakes of 2024 past framing it as a standard horse race. And for each journalist doing hard-hitting investigative reporting on, say, Supreme Court corruption or Trump’s foreign money scandals, there’s reams of protection of Trump’s insults and tirades.
What’s worse is that as a result of the media enterprise is in such a diminished state—with subscriptions dwindling, local news decimated, and cable news on the brink—it’s far more susceptible to Republican ref-working. “The suitable wing is extraordinarily expert at charging mainstream journalists with bias, placing them in a defensive crouch,” Margaret Sullivan, media critic and the pinnacle of an ethics middle at Columbia Journalism Faculty, informed me. “Name it working the refs.” (Suppose, for instance, of the numerous tales about Biden’s age and psychological acuity.)
We’ve seen this notably within the case of CNN: For the reason that 2020 race, when Trump accused the community of biased protection, prompting chants like “CNN sucks,” CNN has since employed more on-air Republicans and ended its long-running media criticism present “Reliable Sources.” The community beneath Chris Licht parted methods with some hosts and analysts recognized for holding Trump to account and placed on a town hall that appeared extra like a marketing campaign rally. Extra just lately, CNN didn’t present real-time fact-checking when Trump debated Joe Biden in June. (Trump made more than 30 false claims on air, as CNN famous later.)
With one other hotly anticipated debate simply weeks away, this time between Trump and Harris on ABC, it’ll be price watching how the media covers what’ll absolutely be a stream of nonsensical lies from the GOP nominee. Whereas many columnists and pundits have been fast to name on Biden to drop out after his disastrous debate efficiency, it’s unlikely you’ll see the identical in September, as questions of Trump’s psychological health have by no means damaged by way of in an identical method.
Simply days in the past at his Mar-a-Lago presser, Trump informed a complicated and confabulated story about driving in a helicopter with Willie Brown, whom he seems to have confused with former metropolis council member and California state senator Nate Holden. The screwup bought some protection, however as is the case with Trump since 2016, such moments get rapidly overtaken by the most recent outrage or string of bogus claims.
