Who’s up and who’s down
S. V. Dáte reminds us that Trump tried to enact a coup and journalists should not obscure that fact.
Donald Trump is the only president who used the threat of violence and then actual violence in an attempt to remain in power — the very definition of a coup. It was the singular unique act of his tenure, truly historic. In 232 years of elections, no other president had done anything remotely close to what Trump did.
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Yet, somehow, this key bit of context almost never makes it into news coverage of Trump’s 2024 campaign. Instead, he is treated like any other candidate — with the focus on things like how he will fend off Ron DeSantis, what nickname he’ll come up with for Nikki Haley, and what strategy he’ll use to win back suburban women voters. We’re already seeing the puff profiles about his campaign staff that make those stories possible.
Journalism has a tendency to normalize the abnormal…I guess because it’s so anxious to avoid being seen as “partisan”? Trump tried to overthrow the government, yes, but also he’s running for president, so gotta be impartial. Mentioning his treason would look so terribly not impartial.
Dáte says much the same.
How we got to a point where a man who attempted an actual coup is treated like any other candidate for office cannot really be fathomed without an understanding of how political journalism has come to be practiced.
Reporters who cover entertainment — sports, say, or movies — have long understood that their livelihoods depend on their subjects liking them. Not respecting them as professionals who have jobs to do, but actually liking them. Because celebrities can choose to speak to you, and make your career a success, or can freeze you out, making your job damned-near impossible. Exclusive interviews and quotes and photos are gold in this world. Getting them means promotions and higher-paying jobs with more glamorous outlets.
So it is, nowadays, in political journalism as well. Not government journalism, which often requires expertise in a particular subject area — banking or health care, for example — but which at the very least involves knowing the rules and processes of the governmental body in question. Political journalism today, in contrast, is really only about who is winning and, perhaps more important, who is likely to win.
It’s like the Super Bowl, or the Oscars. Why is that? Who cares about the Super Bowl or the Oscars? Why do they get such heavy publicity and reporting and air time?
I guess because it’s simple? It’s just who won and who lost. We know where we are. More complicated than that is, well, more complicated.
Subject area expertise is almost nonexistent. Instead, it’s all about how Candidate X will message voters better than Candidate Y. Covering this is obviously easier if you have good connections with “senior advisers” and “top strategists” to both X and Y, so you can file reports based on “people familiar with” X and Y’s “thinking.”
It is no coincidence that this type of reporting has come to be called “horse race” journalism. Except unlike in sports where the results — who wins, who loses, who will get high-round draft picks to start rebuilding next year — in the end carry no real consequence, the failure of political journalism can be catastrophic.
Can be, and has been, and is being. We seem to be stuck with it. It’s great for the Trumps of the world.
There is a case to be made for access journalism in politics, but you have to do something with that access other than just be a conduit for whatever some campaign manager or advisor wants to put out there.
I have often been frustrated with Maggie Haberman, because in my opinion she often gets the balance wrong, and writes articles that promote whatever Jared and Ivanka, or whoever else is talking to her, want to get out there. But she also does come up with some genuine new information that she wouldn’t get without those chummy relationships. Ditto for Bob Woodward, who is notorious for getting people in Washington to dish dirt to him on the grounds that “Woodward’s gonna write a book anyway, and if I don’t talk to him, all my rivals are, and I won’t get my side out there.”
Conversely, I can’t remember ever reading a piece by Mark Halperin or Chris Cillizza and thinking that I was getting any kind of insight. And yet they’re both treated as Indispensable Men, such that Halperin is apparently still successful despite the revelations of his sexual harassment, and it’s only a matter of time before Cillizza gets another high-profile gig.
Science journalism has tended to move that way too, but it’s not because they need access to scientists. They would do better by reporting the science right. But they need readers eyeballs, and by picking something sensational, even if it’s not entirely right or even if it’s not even wrong, can sell to people who have a different approach to science than getting at the truth of how the world works. So anything that even remotely appears to support what someone might want to hear, especially if it appeals to prurient interests or to commercial interests, will be promoted bigly, while the “dull”, “boring” work of real science is ignored.