Friday, December 13, 2024

Opinion | What responsible media coverage in the Trump era would look like

Opinion | What responsible media coverage in the Trump era would look like


This week, I look at what media coverage of 2024 would look like if the media stopped normalizing the MAGA GOP, pick the person of the week and share what I’m checking off my bucket list.

The fawning media reaction (Got more time! Stood out! Bump in the polls!) to the debate performance of Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy — a 9/11-, election- and climate change-denier who likened prominent Black leaders to the KKK wizards — suggests the media learned very little from the 2016 campaign and the Donald Trump presidency. The mainstream political press persists in treating debates as political games (Winners! Losers!) as the participants spout propaganda and defend the four-times-indicted and anti-democratic former president. (Media critic Margaret Sullivan smartly asked in the Guardian: “How can there be ‘winners’ in yet another milestone on the way to fascism?”)

The journalistic malpractice continued after the debate with hours of breathless coverage awaiting Trump’s arrival at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta. Then came 24/7 speculation as to whether Trump’s menacing mug shot would help or hurt him.

This sort of coverages shocks but does not surprise. The media has whistled past the graveyard of democracy for eight years. You want to ask: Can’t they recognize this is not simply another election to be gamified in pursuit of clicks and audience ratings?

In the Philadelphia Inquirer, columnist Will Bunch summed up the current dismal state of affairs:

These are the stakes: dueling visions for America — not Democratic or Republican, with parades and red, white, and blue balloons, but brutal fascism or flawed democracy. The news media needs to stop with the horse-race coverage of this modern-day March on Rome, stop digging incessantly for proof that both sides are guilty of the same sins, and stop thinking that a war for the imperiled survival of the American Experiment is some kind of inexplicable “tribalism.” …

We need the media to see 2024 not as a traditional election but as an effort to mobilize a mass movement that would undo democracy and splatter America with more blood like what was shed Saturday in Jacksonville. We need to understand that if the next 15 months remain the worst covered election in U.S. history, that it might also be the last.

What would responsible media look like? The media could educate the public and defend democracy. Serious news outlets could examine Trump’s sickening similarity to strongmen such as Silvio Berlusconi, Viktor Orban and Benito Mussolini. (And yet, rarely, do we get discussions about how Trump’s abusive treatment of women, toxic masculinity and misogyny perfectly fit within the tradition of fascist leaders from Mussolini to Berlusconi to Moammar Gaddafi.) Reports could discuss how the MAGA movement tracks previous fascist movements that invariably deify a leader and revel in a cult of personality. The media could explain how the GOP has morphed into an anti-democratic party that deploys violence and appeals to white nationalism and nostalgia.

Print, online and cable news could promote political literacy, helping voters understand how authoritarian movements cut deals with big business and religious fundamentalists to secure power. Instead of just reporting that Trump called the media or the judiciary biased, reporters should acknowledge that strongmen and their apologists degrade professional ethics — to discredit the truth.

Interviewers could routinely grill all Republicans about their party’s adherence to the “big lie,” demonization of law enforcement and support for congressional attempts to interfere with prosecution. And the media could seriously investigate how so many Americans have suspended logic, decency and devotion to the rule of law just as others around the world have fallen under the sway of demagogic leaders — rather than amplify their prejudices, conspiracies and anger. (Persisting to cast MAGA supporters as down-and-out working-class folks is misleading and condescending, and ignores the statistically significant correlation between Trump support and views on supposed persecution of White people, gender roles and Christian nationalism.) Lastly, it could stop featuring unenlightening and premature polling.

It is not as though journalists are unfamiliar with serious analysis. The media manages to expose elected foreign leaders who turn to authoritarian tactics (e.g., India’s Narendra Modi and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan). They figure out how to investigate right-wing nationalistic parties in Europe that spout racist tropes and cozy up to the Russians. Nevertheless, too few are willing to engage in exacting, sober journalism when it comes to domestic political coverage.

Treating the GOP like an ordinary party — and the 2024 election like a run-of-the-mill race — allows the media to cling to false equivalencies and feigned neutrality. However, as long as the mainstream media practices business-as-usual journalism, millions of voters will remain oblivious to the dire state of American democracy. And worse, Trump and his party will benefit from the bizarre insistence on treating neo-fascists and their apologists like normal politicians.

Distinguished person of the week

U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan isn’t messing around.

In a tightly run hearing on Monday, she dispensed with a Trump attorney’s ludicrous demand for a 2026 trial date in the Jan. 6, 2021, criminal case. After checking with New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan, who is hearing the civil document falsification case, she set the trial date for March 4. (Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has said he would cooperate in the interests of justice to accommodate other trial dates.)

We got a sense of the difference between Trump rhetoric (and the hysterical arguments from lawyer John Lauro) and how the law works. Chutkan warned an exercised Lauro to “take the temperature down.” She calmly explained that Trump would be treated like any other defendant. “Setting a trial date does not depend and should not depend on a defendant’s personal and professional obligations,” she said. “Mr. Trump, like any defendant, will have to make the trial date work, regardless of his schedule.”

She told Trump’s lawyers the case wouldn’t wait to go to trial in 2026, quickly dispensing with the argument that the Trump team needed at least as much time to prepare as it took for prosecutors to investigate. She wryly observed: “I don’t doubt from it that you’re working diligently, but I will say that you and I have a very, very different estimate of what of the time that’s needed to prepare for this case.” She also didn’t buy the notion that the number of documents determined the time needed to prepare.

In sum, Chutkan delivered a seminar in equal justice under the law. Americans should be grateful that Trump soon will have to face a jury of his peers on well-founded charges. This is what accountability looks like. This is the beauty of the rule of law.

I soon will be walking the grounds at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center and watching matches at the U.S. Open tennis tournament. I’ve never attended a Grand Slam tournament, although this has been on my personal bucket list for a while. You wouldn’t think watching tennis in person is very exciting. However, television somehow slows the action, concealing the jaw-dropping speed of the ball and the lightning quickness of the players. In person, you realize just what magnificent athletes these players really are.

Attending an early-round match (or less-renowned tournaments, as I have over the years) lets you get a glimpse of the stars of the future. Yes, watching Sweden’s Stefan Edberg at the 1984 Olympics, you had the feeling he would turn out to be something special. (He eventually won 41 singles tournaments, including six grand slams.) After seeing American Taylor Fritz and Italian Jannik Sinner over the years at the D.C. Open, you had an inkling they would one day be stars. (Both are ranked in the Top 10.)

When I was a kid, the U.S. Open always meant the bittersweet end of summer and the return to school. This year, the tournament brings unbridled joy — a rare moment to enjoy world-class athletes, cherish memories (when they played on grass!) and guess who will be tomorrow’s champs.

Every Wednesday at noon, I host a live Q&A with readers. Read a transcript of this week’s Q&A, or submit a question for the next one.

Guest: Why hasn’t Mark Meadows been charged under the Hatch Act? What gives?

Jennifer Rubin: The Hatch Act has no enforcement mechanism in civil or criminal court. But it should! Congress would have to amend the law and the president would need to sign it for that to happen.





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