“Phoning It In And The Media’s Trump Surrender”: The Press Throws In The Towel Before The First Bell Is Even Rung
Tuesday offered a sad but telling snapshot from the Donald Trump campaign trail, capturing how the Republican seems to intimidate the press and how journalists too often bend to his will.
Tuesday morning, Trump was scheduled to appear live on several morning programs, via satellites from his home in Florida. But after Trump reportedly didn’t like the way his remote shots looked on television, he canceled the satellite Q&A’s and simply phoned in his interviews live.
That evening, after winning primaries in Mississippi and Michigan, Trump spoke for more than 40 minutes. His rambling address included a weird pitch for his brand of products (steaks, wines, vodka), many of which he didn’t actually own. The all-news cable channels carried Trump’s performance in its entirety and refused to break away even for a minute to cover any of Hillary Clinton’s primetime address, celebrating her Mississippi victory.
As Trump was leaving his televised address, his campaign manager reportedly grabbed the arm of a Breitbart News reporter who was trying to ask the candidate a question. The reporter, Michelle Fields, was nearly pulled to the ground after being forcibly grabbed. “Fields was clearly roughed up by the move,” a witness told Politico. The Daily Beast reported the encounter left her bruised.
So yes, the day featured all the discouraging telltale signs of the media’s Trump mess. The press allowed him to play by new, call-in rules? Check. The press showered Trump with an unprecedented amount of free, uninterrupted airtime? Check. Members of the press were physically insulted or physically manhandled by Trump and his handlers? Check.
If this Trump vs. the press battle were an actual fight, the referee would’ve stopped it a long, long time ago. Indeed, rather than a bout it’s more like Trump stands in his corner, tapes up his gloves, and the press throws in the towel before the first bell is even rung. And yes, to suggest Trump enjoys pushing the press around would be an understatement.
“He’s getting by with a lot of stuff that no candidate should get by with,” according to Walter Mears, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former Associated Press campaign reporter.
But it works for Trump. It definitely works.
That said, note that Tuesday also included an unexpected sliver of media pushback: CBS This Morning stood alone in refusing to allow Trump to replace his scheduled on-camera interview with a phone-in chat. The program cited its longstanding rule against allowing guests to call in.
For most of the campaign, Trump has been awarded the special privilege of calling into programs. Many observers think phone-ins are beneficial to politicians since it’s easier for them to talk over journalists and harder to be pinned down. (Phoners generally preclude the use of on-screen graphics as a tool to confront candidates and get detailed responses.)
“Broadcasting and cable maybe aren’t being as tough as they should be. I have questioned having [Trump] on by telephone, it’s deferring to him in a way, letting him set ground rules that they don’t for others,” former New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt recently told Media Matters. “You do not see his demeanor and it is not the same as having him sit across from an interrogator.”
Between March 1-8, Trump did 17 live interviews with ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. More than half of them were phoned in.
So why did television producers last year invent the running exception for Trump’s phone-ins; the exception that most shows used on Tuesday for him?
“I think there’s enormous interest in Donald Trump as a candidate,” Mary Hager, executive producer of CBS’s Face the Nation, told the Huffington Post last year. “I think if he is only available for a phone interview, we need to be able to help our viewers out in understanding him.” She added, “It’s the Sunday shows responsibility to cover the news.”
Right, but as one veteran TV news pro in the same Huffington Post article pointed out, while front-runners have in the past been able to negotiate the formats of interviews, letting guests phone in for non-breaking news stories is “unprecedented.” So why is it suddenly the media’s “responsibility” to rewrite the rules for Trump? Hager’s answer last year indicated it was because Trump was wildly popular; because there’s “enormous interest.”
Note that Hillary Clinton has accumulated more votes this year than Trump, and according to some recent polls she would easily defeat him in November. (Trump’s among the most disliked politicians in America today.) So again, why the special media rules for the guy who might lose badly in the general election?
On Tuesday, when Trump walked away from his on-camera interviews while claiming his campaign was having technical difficulties with the satellite feed, television sources told CNN’s Brian Stelter that they thought Trump was using a hollow excuse. Yet the candidate, who’s treated like a ratings wonder by news channels, was still given a green light by most of the networks to simply call in.
Why are the phone interviews a big deal? They represent one of the first tangible campaign examples of the press acquiescing to Trump, beginning last summer; making it clear that news executives had no reservations about applying special standards to him. But as CBS This Morning showed this week, the phoners also represent a very simple way for the press to push back. They’re probably the easiest and quickest fix the media could make in an effort to recalibrate its lost leverage with Trump.
Just don’t do it. It’s really that simple.
By: Eric Boehlert, Media Matters For America, March 10, 2016
“There Are Liars, And Then There’s Donald”: Why Donald Trump’s Brazen Lies Overwhelm The Press
There have been many dishonest presidential candidates in our history; indeed, it would be almost impossible, no matter how virtuous, to spend a year or two giving speeches, addressing audiences large and small, trying to persuade voters — in short, talking all day while your words are being recorded — without getting a few things wrong. Some correct themselves after it happens, some just don’t use that particular line again, and others forge on ahead, repeating falsehoods even after they’ve been called out.
But there are liars, and then there’s Donald Trump. He may have an inflated opinion of himself, but when it comes to lying, the man has truly reached a level no one else can approach.
If you’ve watched Trump at all, you’ve probably had this experience: First he says something outlandish (“If we negotiated the price of drugs, we’d save $300 billion a year“), and you think “That can’t possibly be true.” Then he moves on to something even more bizarre (“We have the highest taxes anywhere in the world“), and you say, “Now I know that’s not true.” But he keeps going, offering one ridiculous and false claim after another, until you’re left shaking your head in wonder.
Trump’s lies come in many different forms. Some are those that are clearly wrong, and which it’s almost certain he knows are wrong, as when he says The Art of the Deal is “the number one selling business book of all time” (not even close). Some are things he seems to have heard somewhere that are false; of course, repeating such a story doesn’t become an intentional lie until you know it’s false but insist it’s true. That’s the case with things like Trump’s bogus story about thousands of Muslims celebrating the fall of the Twin Towers on rooftops in Jersey City, or with his repeated story that the 9/11 hijackers sent their wives and girlfriends back to Saudi Arabia from the U.S. two days before the attacks (only two of the 19 hijackers were married, one had a girlfriend, and none of those three were in the United States). Others might be put down to being just wild exaggerations, as when he claims that all the polls show him beating Hillary Clinton in a general election (nope).
But the sheer volume of Trump’s lies may, paradoxically, protect him from the kind of condemnation he ought to be be getting. His unique style was on majestic display at the press conference he gave Tuesday night after another round of primaries, in which he set out to defend himself against Mitt Romney’s charge that many of his branding ventures — like Trump Steaks, Trump Vodka, and Trump Magazine — have gone out of business.
It was complete with visual displays as phony as Trump’s claims. Romney “talked about the water company” said Trump, showing his fantastic, luxurious water. But Romney said nothing about a water company, and it appears that Trump’s water is made by this company in Connecticut, and then they slap a “Trump” label on it and sell it at his resorts.
“We have Trump Steaks,” he said, pointing to a platter full of steaks that had been brought out for the occasion. But Trump Steaks have been off the market for a decade; the steaks at the press conference were still in wrappers indicating they came from a meat company called Bush Brothers.
“We have Trump Magazine,” Trump said, holding up not the actual Trump Magazine, which stopped publishing in 2009, but something called The Jewel of Palm Beach, which he apparently has printed up and passed out to promote his Mar-a-Lago resort. “He mentioned Trump Vodka,” Trump said, going on to explain how he owns a working winery (actually true!), but not saying anything about the vodka, which indeed went bust in 2011 (Jonathan Ellis explains all this, with pictures).
What should reporters do when they’re confronted with this kind of blizzard of baloney? There aren’t any easy answers. Though some publications employ fact checkers who pick out certain claims they think are meaningful enough to investigate at length, if you’re covering a Trump rally or press conference and you decide to explain all the things he said that were false, that would make up the entirety of your story and there would be no time or space to address anything else.
And if a reporter for a major news organization described this matter accurately — that Trump is an unusually enthusiastic liar whose falsehoods come in such quantity that they’re difficult to keep up with — she’d be accused of abandoning her objectivity.
The real genius of Trump’s mendacity lies in its brazenness. One of the assumptions behind the fact-checking enterprise is that politicians are susceptible to being shamed: If they lie, you can expose the lie and then they’ll be less likely to repeat it. After all, nobody wants to be tarred as a liar. But what happens when you’re confronted with a politician who is utterly without shame? You can reveal where he’s lied, explain all the facts, and try as hard as you can to inoculate the public against his falsehoods. But by the time you’ve done that, he has already told 10 more lies.
“A little hyperbole never hurts,” Trump wrote in The Art of the Deal. “People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular.” He seems to believe that what matters isn’t the truth, but whether you lie with enough bravado. And so far, he’s largely getting away with it.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Week, March 10, 2016
“The Master Media Manipulator”: It’s The Donald Trump Show, And The Media Are Nothing More Than Players
I wrote earlier about the peculiar spectacle Tuesday night of Donald Trump giving a 45-minute infomercial for his product lines, but I think it’s also worth noting how his post-primary press conferences illustrate his genius for media manipulation.
Two things specifically stuck out at me watching these performances. The first was that he stacks the first few rows of these events with his friends and supporters. And being a friendly audience, they eat up his shtick – laughing at his jokes and cheering on cue. For the casual viewer who doesn’t know any better, it might seem like he’s giving a “press conference” to an adoring media (as opposed to, say, a victory speech in front of supporters where crowd enthusiasm would be more expected).
Combine that with the second thing that has stuck out to me: When he gets around to taking questions, only he is mic’d up – you cannot hear his interlocutors’ questions. This gives him a couple of advantages. First, he can, at minimum, answer the question he wants to rather than the one asked, or he can go further, and on a rolling basis, screen out or ignore questions he doesn’t like. So Tuesday night, an NBC reporter reportedly – of course, TV viewers couldn’t hear the question – asked Trump about his verbal vulgarity and how parents should explain his language to their children. Trump didn’t like the question, so he didn’t answer it. Instead (perhaps taking a page from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s bullying playbook) he derided the reporter: “Oh, you’re so politically correct, you’re so beautiful. Oh, look at you – aww, he’s so – oh I know you’ve never heard a little bad, a little off-language. I know, you’re so perfect. Aren’t you perfect? Aren’t you just a perfect young man. Give me a break. You know what? It’s stuff like that that people in this country are tired of. It’s stuff like that.”
What was the question? All viewers got was Trump the Dominant ridiculing a reporter while the rest of the audience at this “press conference” laughed along. It’s Trump’s show, and the reporters become muted bit players abetting him.
Of course that doesn’t even get at their bosses, the “cable news” execs who carry his every utterance as if he actually were the president. (And does any other politician get to phone in interviews as much as Trump, rather than having to get in front of a camera?) Look, I get that Trump has some entertainment value and that his unscripted nature means that you never know what is going to pop out of his mouth at any time. But there’s got to be some sense of balance and/or responsibility. Fox, CNN and MSNBC gave Trump 45 minutes in prime time. As Politico’s Hadas Gold noted Tuesday night, “Forty five minutes of uninterrupted TV time on the three cable news networks is the equivalent of millions of dollars in free media for a campaign – a stunning amount of TV time.”
And he gets it routinely, because he’s a master of manipulating the media.
By: Robert Schlesinger, Managing Editor for Opinion, U.S. News & World Report, March 9, 2016
“Unsettling Paranoia”: Despite Media’s ‘Crush,’ Rubio Sees Bizarre Conspiracy
In media and political circles, it’s known as the “Full Ginsburg.” It’s when one notable public figure appears on all five major Sunday morning shows on the same day, and it’s usually reserved for policymakers at the center of major breakthroughs.
It came as something of a surprise, then, when Marco Rubio celebrated his fifth-place finish in the New Hampshire primary by pulling off the Full Ginsburg. Then seven days later, following his double-digit loss in the South Carolina primary, Rubio pulled off the Full Ginsburg again, receiving and accepting five more Sunday-show invitations.
When was the last time someone had back-to-back Full Ginsburgs? Never. Rubio, once hailed as “the Republican savior” on the cover of Time magazine, received a media reward that no American has ever received.
Had the Florida senator actually won those primaries, the media’s adulation might have been easier to understand, but remember, Rubio made 10 appearances over two Sundays after embarrassing defeats.
The reason for this special treatment is one of those things the political world tends not to talk about, though Slate’s Jamelle Bouie recently acknowledged what usually goes unsaid: “[T]he media has a huge crush” on Marco Rubio.
With this in mind, it came as something of a surprise to see Rubio on CBS this morning, complaining about an elaborate media conspiracy – to help Donald Trump. The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent flagged this bizarre quote:
“The media’s pumping [Trump] up as some sort of unstoppable force…. Unfortunately he’s being pumped up because many in the media with a bias know that he’ll be easy to beat in a general election.”
In a separate ABC interview this morning – the conspiracy is so vast, news organizations keep putting Rubio on television so he can share his conspiracy theory – the senator said the media is “holding back” its Trump criticism in order to hurt Republicans in the fall.
“It’s important for Republicans and conservatives to be aware of what is happening,” he added.
So, from Rubio’s perspective, the same news organizations that have shown him levels of affection that border on creepy are actually conspiring in secret against him. It’s all part of an elaborate media ruse to help Trump defeat Rubio in order to help Democrats.
Remember, thanks to media hype, we’re supposed to think Rubio’s the smart one in the 2016 field.
The senator’s conspiracy theory is so crazy, it’s unsettling that he repeated it out loud on national television. Keep in mind that last night, as part of the network’s debate coverage, CNN told viewers that Rubio has “new momentum.” The network made the claim before the debate, on the heels of Rubio losing the Nevada caucuses – which he expected to win – by 22 points.
This, a week after Politico published a lengthy report on Rubio’s campaign in South Carolina – the headline read, “Rubio surges back to electrify South Carolina” – that read as if his campaign aides had written it themselves.
This, nearly a month after pundits and reporters eagerly pretended Rubio’s third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses was actually a triumphant victory.
Greg Sargent recently noted that media figures are “making it absurdly obvious that they want to be able to say Rubio is rising,” prompting MSNBC’s Chris Hayes to respond, “It’s like watching parents attempt to will their toddler into doing a difficult task.”
To be sure, this isn’t unprecedented. We can probably all think of election cycles in which the media obviously adores a candidate (John McCain in 2000, for example) and obviously scorns another (Al Gore in 2000, for example). It certainly seems as if the “crush” on Rubio is real, but he’s not the first to enjoy such affections.
Rubio is, however, the first candidate in recent memory who benefits from the media’s overt fondness, but who nevertheless believes the media is engaged in a conspiracy to help one of his rivals, in order to help one of his other rivals.
Such paranoia says something unsettling about the presidential hopeful’s perspective.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, February 26, 2016
“Meekly Accepting GOP’s Extreme Premise”: As Obama Moves To Replace Scalia, The Press Enables Radical GOP Obstruction
In the wake of Antonin Scalia’s sudden death, the Beltway press almost immediately began to seamlessly frame the unfolding debate about the Supreme Court justice’s replacement along the contours of Republican talking points. To do so, the press continued its habit of looking away from the GOP’s stunning record of institutional obstructionism since 2009.
Immediately after the news broke of Scalia’s passing, Republican Senate leaders, GOP presidential candidates, and conservative commentators declared that the job of picking Scalia’s replacement should be performed not by President Obama, but by his successor.
Quickly suggesting that Obama was picking a “fight” with Republicans by signaling he plans to fulfill his constitutional duty by nominating Scalia’s successor, the press aided Republicans by presenting this radical plan to obstruct the president as being an unsurprising move that Democrats would likely copy if put in the same position during an election year. (Given the rarity of the situation precedents aren’t perfect, but it’s worth mentioning that during the election year of 1988, Democrats actually did the opposite, confirming Justice Anthony Kennedy unanimously.)
The framework for much of the coverage regarding the GOP’s radical demand that Scalia’s seat sit empty for a year is this: It’s Obama’s behavior that’s setting off a showdown, and of course Republicans would categorically oppose anyone Obama nominates. But journalists often don’t explain why: Why is it obvious Obama would have zero chance of getting a Supreme Court nominee confirmed when every president in the past has been able to fill vacancies?
Is it unusual for a president to face a Supreme Court vacancy his final year in office? It is. But there’s nothing in the Constitution to suggest the rules change under the current circumstances. (Obama still has 50 weeks left in office.) It’s Republicans who have declared that all new rules must apply. And it’s the press that has rather meekly accepted the extreme premise.
Note that Republicans and their conservative fans in the media aren’t telling Obama that a particular nominee he selects to become the next justice is flawed and will likely be rejected after hearings are held. Republicans are telling Obama that there’s no point in even bothering to make a selection because the Senate will reject anyone the president names. Period. The seat will remain vacant for an entire year. That is the definition of radical. But the press still looks away.
For instance, Politico reported the president “was facing the choice between setting off a nasty brawl with Congress by seizing the best chance in a generation to flip the ideological balance of the Supreme Court, or simply punting.” The Politico headline claimed Obama had chosen to “fight” Republicans.
But Obama faces no real “choice,” and he isn’t the one who decided to pick a “fight.” As president of the United States he’s obligated to fill Supreme Court vacancies.
The New York Times stressed Scalia’s death had sparked “an immediate partisan battle,” suggesting the warfare ran both ways. But how, by doing what he’s supposed to do as president, is Obama sparking a “partisan battle”?
If Obama eventually decided to nominate an extremely liberal justice to replace the extremely conservative Scalia, then yes, that could accurately be described as sparking a “partisan battle.” But what could be “partisan” about the president simply doing what the Constitution instructs him to do?
Meanwhile, the Associated Press framed the unfolding story as Obama’s announcement being “a direct rebuttal to Senate Republicans,” without noting the Republican demand that a Supreme Court justice’s seat sit empty for at least a year is without recent precedent.
And BuzzFeed suggested Scalia’s vacancy is different because the justice was, “as one Republican put it, ‘a rock solid conservative seat,’ and given the divisions on the court conservatives will be adamant that one of their own replace him.”
But that’s not how Supreme Court nominations work. Obviously, while the Senate has the responsibility to advise and consent on nominees, the party out of power doesn’t get to make the selection. So why the media suggestion that Republicans deserve a say in this case, or else?
Again and again, the press has depicted Obama’s expected action in the wake of Scalia’s death as being highly controversial or partisan, when in fact it’s Republicans who are acting in erratic ways by categorically announcing they’ll refuse to even consider Obama’s next Supreme Court pick.
The sad part is this type of media acquiescence has become a hallmark of the Obama era. Republicans have routinely obliterated Beltway precedents when it comes to granting Obama the leeway that previous presidents were given by their partisan foes in Congress.
Yet each step along the way, journalists have pulled back, refusing to detail the seismic shift taking place. Instead, journalists have portrayed the obstruction as routine, and often blamed Obama for not being able to avoid the showdowns.
Today’s Republican Party is acting in a way that defies all historic norms. We saw it with the GOP’s gun law obstructionism, the sequester obstructionism, the government shutdown obstructionism, the Chuck Hagel confirmation obstructionism, the Susan Rice secretary of state obstructionism, the Hurricane Sandy emergency relief obstructionism, and the consistent obstruction of judicial nominees.
For years under Obama, Republicans have systematically destroyed Beltway norms and protocols, denying the president his traditional latitude to govern and make appointments. It’s sad that in Obama’s final year in office, the press is still turning a blind eye to the GOP’s radical nature.
By: Eric Boehlert, Media Matters for America, February 15, 2016
Share This Blog
Unknown Feed- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
mykeystrokes.com 