“How Do You Solve A Problem Like Donald Trump?”: All Media Is Political, Without Exception; Best To Be Honest About It
As Donald Trump has implausibly moved into a tie for first place in the GOP primary, there has been much discussion in media circles about how to treat his candidacy. Most media organizations (including The Week!) have published an inordinate amount of stories about Trump. The Huffington Post, on the other hand, recently announced it would move all coverage of Trump’s campaign to the entertainment section.
This sparked a backlash from some reporters, such as The Daily Beast‘s Olivia Nuzzi, who argued that such a move is an improper delegitimization of the tens of thousands of Trump supporters out there. “[P]olling competitively and being a registered candidate makes him legitimate. End of story,” she wrote on Twitter.
It’s certainly true that The Huffington Post‘s action is a swipe against Trump’s many supporters. But it is also simply impossible for reporters — who are human beings, after all — to avoid some sort of judgment on the legitimacy of a presidential candidate.
As I’ve argued before, normative judgments are inherent to the practice of all but the very simplest journalism. To demand that Trump be covered like any other “legitimate” presidential candidate is to demand that journalists implicitly legitimize his ideas. On the contrary, it is right and proper for publications to decide how they view a candidate’s policy platform and overall persona; signaling that he will be treated like a trashy celebrity is one way of doing that.
I respect The Huffington Post‘s right to make coverage choices as it sees fit. I’m also not sure I agree with the decision to move Trump into the entertainment section. As Matt Yglesias argues, Trump’s highly unexpected success — especially given that it came immediately after he started up with bilious racist rants against Mexican immigrants — suggests there is a fairly wide constituency for gutter nativism. That is an important truth of our politics and our nation that should not just be shrugged off as some carnival sideshow.
Instead of banishing Trump to the land of Kardashians and superheroes, the media would probably be better off simply reporting on Trump with open contempt. His ideas are disgusting and he’s a vicious, racist bully. But it’s not wise to write him — or the ideas that he champions — off as a self-aggrandizing joke. There are a great many people who would eagerly sign on to an immigration-restriction agenda, and Trump would definitely not be the first colossal buffoon elected to the head of a major state.
And that brings me to Bernie Sanders, who has been the subject of multiple comparisons to Trump (including one from my colleague Damon Linker) as representing the two “extremes” of American politics. This, too, is a mistake by the media.
We’re all grasping for ways to deal with this brainless, hate-spewing hurricane who has somehow managed to attract the support of tens of thousands of Americans in spite of — actually, let’s be honest: because of — his hateful racism. Just as The Huffington Post‘s decision to write Trump off as “entertainment” is understandable, so too is the media’s search to find Trump’s polar opposite on the left in order to give some context to this flagrantly foolish carnival barker.
But to compare Sanders, a serious person with serious ideas, to a clown who rants about how Mexicans are mostly criminals and rapists, is inherently delegitimizing. Putting Trump in the entertainment section makes The Huffington Post‘s perspective clear. So does grafting Trump to Sanders — but in a backhanded and cheap way that’s unfair to the socialist senator from Vermont.
Trump’s racist views do have the support of a substantial minority. But Sanders’ agenda is far more popular. About three-quarters of Americans support raising the minimum wage to $10.10. Social Security is likely the most popular government program of all time — and 82 percent would raise the payroll tax across the board to keep it solvent. Sixty-eight percent support increasing taxes on the rich.
Now, that is not to rule out all positive coverage of Trump, or negative coverage of Sanders. Conservative publications will do both, no doubt, as is their right. The point is that coverage should be grounded in a clear normative view, not some faux-omniscient view from nowhere. All media is political, without exception. Best to be honest about it.
By: Ryan Cooper, The Week, July 20, 2015
“The Frames That Will Guide Their Coverage”: When Reporters Decide A Candidate’s Supposed Character Flaw ‘Raises Questions’, Watch Out
Which of Hillary Clinton’s character flaws do you find most troubling? If you’re a Republican, you may not have quite decided yet, since there are any number of things about her you can’t stand. But if you’re hoping to defeat her, you’d do well to home in on whatever journalists think might be her primary character flaw, because that’s what will shape much of their coverage between now and next November.
The determination of that central flaw for each of the presidential candidates will soon become one of reporters’ key tasks as they construct the frames that are going to guide their coverage of the race. And the idea that Clinton can’t be trusted is an early contender for her central defect, the one journalists will contemplate, discuss, explore, and most importantly, use to decide what is important and irrelevant when reporting on her.
Take a look at the lead of this article by Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post, titled “For Hillary Clinton, a trust deficit to dismount“:
Is Hillary Clinton honest enough to be president?
That question—phrased in a thousand different ways but always with the same doubts in mind—sits at the heart of a campaign that will span the next 18 months and on which billions upon billions of dollars will be spent.
If Cillizza was trying to write a campaign-defining piece that will be cited in histories of 2016 as representative of the press’s perspective on Clinton, he couldn’t have done much better. This happens in every presidential race: Each candidate is reduced to one or two flaws, the things about them that are supposed to “raise questions” and make us all wonder whether we’d be comfortable with them in the Oval Office. Republicans are surely hoping that reporters will lock in a frame in which Clinton is presumed to be dishonest, because once that happens, they will pay far more attention to the veracity of everything she says and highlight every point of divergence from the truth, no matter how trivial. This is how character frames operate, and the process works the same for Republicans and Democrats.
It’s a double-edged sword for candidates, because it means that an absurd amount of attention will be given to some things they do and say, while others that might get a different candidate in trouble will be ignored or downplayed. Look back at almost any recent election and you can see it in action. For instance, in 2012, Mitt Romney was defined as an uncaring plutocrat (who was also stiff and awkward), so when he said something that seemed to highlight this flaw—like “Corporations are people, my friends”—it would be replayed and repeated over and over in news reports. But Romney was also a spectacularly dishonest candidate, and despite the efforts of some on the left, dishonesty never came to define him. He might have claimed he was being unfairly treated on the first count, but on the second he got something of a pass.
Let’s take another example to show why this selection of frames matters. In no election in my lifetime was there more discussion about honesty than the one in 2000, which reporters essentially presented as a contest between a well-meaning and forthright simpleton on one side, and a stiff and dishonest self-aggrandizer on the other. Once those frames were settled (and it happened early on), reporters sifted everything Al Gore said about his record like prospectors panning for gold, trying to find anything that would suggest an exaggeration. They even went so far as to make some up; Gore never said he “invented the Internet,” nor did he say many of the other things he was accused of having said.
Gore did mangle his words from time to time, but when he did, reporters didn’t bother to write a story about it. Likewise, George W. Bush said many things that weren’t true, but because he was supposed to be the dumb one, not the liar, reporters didn’t give them much attention. Even when they did, it would be in the form of a simple correction: The candidate said this, while the actual truth is that. What reporters didn’t do was say that a false statement from Bush or a bit of linguistic confusion from Gore “raised questions” about either’s fitness for the presidency; those “questions” (almost always left unspecified, both in who’s asking them and what they’re asking) are only raised around the central character flaw that reporters have settled on.
Bush’s lies during the 2000 campaign actually turned out to be quite revealing, which demonstrates that the problem isn’t simply the way the media focuses on one or two character flaws, but how shaky their judgment is of what matters. While Gore did occasionally exaggerate his importance in events of the past, Bush lied mostly about policy: what precisely he did as governor of Texas, what was in the plans he was presenting, and what he wanted to do. It turned out that as president, he deceived the public on policy as well, not only on the Iraq War, but also on a whole host of issues.
This demonstrates an important principle that seldom gets noticed. When a candidate gets caught in a lie, people often say, “If he’ll lie about about this, what else will he lie about?” The most useful answer is that a candidate is likely to lie about things that resemble what you just caught him lying about. Bill Clinton, for instance, wasn’t particularly forthcoming in 1992 about whose bed he had or hadn’t shared, and when he was president, that’s exactly what he lied to the country about. Bush, on the other hand, spun an absurd tale about how his tax-cut plan was centered on struggling workers, and when he got into office, sold his upper-income tax cuts with the same misleading rationale.
One of the reasons reporters gravitate to discussions of “character” is that such examinations allow for all kinds of unsupported speculation and offering of opinions, served up with the thinnest veneer of objectivity. A supposedly objective reporter won’t go on a Sunday-show roundtable and say, “Clinton’s tax plan is a bad idea,” but he will say, “Clinton has a truth problem.” Both are statements of opinion but, for reporters, statements of opinion about a candidate’s character are permissible, while statements of opinion about policy aren’t.
So is Hillary Clinton less trustworthy than Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Marco Rubio, or any other politician? Maybe, but maybe not. The problem is that reporters often answer the question just by choosing to ask it for one candidate, but not for another.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect, May 4, 2015
A Plea To Fellow Republicans — Stop Defending Sarah Palin
As a Republican, it pains my heart to watch the response to Sarah Palin’s latest gaffe. Like so many times before, Palin has put herself on the hot plate and shown that she does not know when to be quiet.
From the beginning, Republicans have squirmed through every public appearance she makes. From the 2008 debates to this current joke of a bus tour, Palin has shown she lacks the basic skills to handle pressure.
This is not a good sign in a potential candidate for the Republican nomination for president.
Why then, does Palin continue to get support from Republicans?
The latest situation with Palin messing up the history of Paul Revere is a perfect example. It is clear to anyone that saw the video that Palin had no clue what she was talking about.
It was a moment of verbal vomit that made her seem like she had never attended grade school. The entire episode could have been prevented any number of ways. Palin could have simply ignored the question and kept walking. Palin could have changed the subject.
More importantly, Palin could have actually took a moment to read about Revere before visiting so that she would be prepared for the gaggle of reporters that were sure to follow her. That would have been novel for her.
What makes the entire situation so bad, however, is the aftermath. Like so many Palin “situations” in the past, Palin is now coming out and saying she was right. She is trying to use semantics to say that the British were warned because Revere confessed to them.
Republicans are actually following suit and trying to latch onto that argument for her. That makes the party look completely ignorant right beside her.
Revere did not warn the British. Revere warned the colonists and confessed to the British. Revere did not ring bells or shoot warning shots, as this would have drawn attention and squashed the revolt before it even began.
It is clear that Palin simply tried to fake her way through this and messed up like she always does when she attempts such folly.
After a couple of years of defending and trying to make sense of Sarah Palin, it is time for Republicans to say enough. Sarah Palin had a chance to come out and say she messed up. Sarah was too arrogant to do so.
Perhaps it is time that we Republicans simply admit we messed up in backing Palin and move forward. Liberals are not afraid of Sarah Palin. That is wishful thinking to say the least.
They pray for her nomination.
By: Rodney Southern, Yahoo Contributor Network, June 6, 2011
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