The Sunday Story: Media "Failings" In Covering Trump

In the fourth and final Republican debate on December 6th, Governor Chris Christie addressed

the elephant in the room.

He warned Americans of what may come if Donald Trump gets re-elected president.

If you ever got another Donald Trump term, he's letting you know, I am your retribution.

He will only be, Elizabeth, he will only be his own retribution.

He doesn't care for the American people.

It's Donald Trump first.

A 2018 study showed that Trump received around $2 billion in free media and got substantially

more coverage than his opponents aiding his campaign.

Now Trump is dominating headlines again as he faces federal indictments and civil lawsuits

while campaigning at the same time.

sexual mutilation.

We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that

live like vermin within the confines of our country.

made me think about Trump and how we cover him as journalists.

I wanted to share it with you.

I spoke with two people who believe the media is failing in the way it's reporting on Trump

and warn these failures put our democracy at risk.

Brian Closs is an associate professor of global politics at University College London and

a contributing writer for The Atlantic.

He's written extensively on democracy and authoritarianism.

Margaret Sullivan is a media, culture, and politics columnist for The Guardian.

Sullivan was formerly a media columnist at The Washington Post and a public editor at

The New York Times.

So let's begin with a general assessment of how the press is covering Donald Trump right now.

How would each of you rate the quality of the coverage of Trump, his legal proceedings,

and re-election campaign?

Let's start with Margaret.

The press has not covered Trump very well since the very beginning when he first came

down the escalator in 2015.

There was this sort of nonchalant, both fascination with him and also not really understanding

that he could actually get elected.

And, you know, so now it's been many years throughout an entire administration and we

have another campaign.

I do think that the mainstream press is starting to reflect the consequences of a second Trump

term a little bit better, but I don't think they're there yet.

with Trump is that a lot of the things that he's doing, both in terms of what he's posting

on Truth Social, his social media network, and what he's saying at rallies, is not cutting

through to the ordinary voter.

And that's important because some of the stuff he's saying is the most extreme rhetoric of

any presidential candidate in the last four or five, six decades.

So I'll give you an example of this.

There was a rally in October where Trump floated the idea of shooting shoplifters on site.

So anyone who commits a petty crime gets killed.

It's an extradition killing that the leading contender for the Republican nomination floated.

And right after that, he floated the idea of joking about Paul Pelosi being nearly beaten

to death with a hammer.

And there was no coverage of this for three days in the New York Times, at which point

it appeared on page 14.

And I think what the press is doing is it's thinking, people know Trump says crazy stuff

lots of the time, and that's fine, but it's still very important that they see it.

Because there's another bit of rhetoric he recently posted on Truth Social, where he

effectively implied that the former top general of the United States, Mark Milley, deserved

to be executed.

And that is one of the most unbelievable things that a presidential candidate could say, one

of the most extreme things.

It was not covered in most of the press.

And I think that is a real failing where we're not understanding the scale of the threat

that Trump poses because it's been baked in as sort of what I call the banality of crazy,

that it's so routine that it's not generating headlines.

it seemed like during that time, there were different lessons that could be taken from

media coverage of the 2016 election.

And then some people would say a criticism that was often leveraged against the media

was that you're putting too much attention on Trump.

You're giving him too much of a microphone.

You're giving him a platform.

And then there was the question of this idea that you just brought up, Brian, that you're

not covering enough.

You're not covering what he's saying.

So I guess, how do you balance that from people who would say, he's a candidate, if you give

him a whole, whole bunch of coverage, is that actually helping him to spread his message?

him too much coverage in this $2 billion of free airtime, because Trump was not the leading

candidate at the time.

He was low in the polls, and this catapulted him to national prominence.

So it was a mismatch between novelty, again, and magnitude, right?

He was very exciting.

He was very interesting.

He generated a lot of coverage.

He wasn't actually the most important candidate at the race at the time.

And the press, I think, enabled that to a certain extent.

Now, he is the most important candidate in the Republican Party, by far.

He's very likely to have a significant chance of retaking the White House.

And so the magnitude is there, right?

It's important to cover him.

And I think the risks of covering him are no longer that people will find out about

Donald Trump's vile rhetoric, that they have been exposed to previously.

It's that they'll forget how vile it was.

Because when you see Trump through the prism of just New York Times headlines, as opposed

to some of his truly deranged truth social posts, I mean, really, really deranged, where

he's talking about executing a top general in the United States, people need to be reminded

that this is not normal.

This is not your run-of-the-mill Republican.

So I think the risks of amplifying him now, that ship sailed.

He's incredibly prominent.

He's the most famous person in the world.

So I'm less worried about that.

I'm more worried about the sort of swing voters who have forgotten that this is a very extreme,

very dangerous person who doesn't support democracy, has plotted against it, and has

some viewpoints that are significantly outside of the mainstream of what democratic politics

can and should be.

it's a bunch of lies, which it often is with Trump.

But at the same time, you want the public to understand what's going on.

So how do you get that across?

And I think it has a lot to do with how the story is told, what the framing is, how much

context you bring to it.

And I would just offer as an example, and not to pick on the Associated Press because

they do a great job in many ways, but recently there was a story about how Trump and his

allies were basically planning to use the military if he gets reelected to quell protests,

civil protests on the street, and to invoke the Insurrection Act on day one in order to

do this.

This is really outrageous stuff.

And the AP headline says, Trump hints at expanded role for the military within the United States.

A legacy law gives him few guardrails.

And it's, you know, it's this kind of very quiet presentation of something that's completely

outrageous that's like, it's not really getting across to the public the magnitude or the

outrageousness of these kinds of ideas.

I think that newsrooms need to be thinking about how to get across to the public what

is going on here, because I'm convinced it's not coming across.

It's just sort of like, oh, Trump's kind of crazy.

He's got a freewheeling style.

The country's polarized over and out.

violent rhetoric.

Another thing that he has talked a lot about is how he wants to gut the, quote, deep state,

which is, you know, basically just, you know, government civil servants, and that he wants

to install loyalists.

He wants to weaponize the Justice Department against political opponents.

And, Margaret, as you just mentioned, there is reporting that he's talking about the

Insurrection Act and using the military to put down protests.

Do you think that it's fair for the media, for reporters to call Trump a threat to

America's democracy?

And in doing so, does that make them biased against Trump?

And I think that this is a case where, you know, I study the breakdown of democracy.

There is nobody in my field who thinks that Donald Trump is not a threat to democracy.

Every single person does, who studies the breakdown of democracy in political science.

And it's so clear cut, right?

I mean, you listed several examples, but it's so obvious what's happening.

And you know, Joe Biden, there's plenty of reasons to criticize him, but he's a relatively

mainstream Democrat.

And, you know, I think this is where the press, when it often wants to sort of convey

balance, to be seen as fair, is failing to meet the moment.

The press has learned this lesson really effectively, I would say, with climate change,

right? You don't both sides climate change because the science is clear.

So you put on a scientist and you don't put them next to a climate change denier.

When it comes to American democracy, because it's partisan, I think the press ends up

chasing shiny objects that are around novelty.

And I'll give you two quick examples.

One is after Trump floated that idea of shooting shoplifters that I discussed, I did a

Google search looking at news articles.

There were more articles, substantially more articles, about Joe Biden's dog biting a

Secret Service agent than there were about Trump threatening to shoot shoplifters if

he returned to power. The other example is that there was this massive story when

Hillary Clinton talked about how some Trump supporters were deplorables in a way where

she described them in negative language, not saying she would go after them with the

power of the state or anything like that, just criticized them.

When there was an analysis done by Media Matters for America, they found there was 18

times more coverage of that remark than when Trump recently said that his political

opponents were vermin who he would use the power of the presidency to, quote, root out.

Right. I mean, this is echoing some of the darkest moments in history.

And the language used is not normal rhetoric.

I mean, this is not Mitt Romney, John McCain, George W.

Bush. This is something entirely different.

So the press has an obligation to convey the magnitude of it.

It's not novel. It's not the shiny object.

It's not going to generate lots of clicks because it is a repetitive story.

But it's by far the most important story in America and in my view in the world right

now, because if American democracy breaks down, the reverberations around the world

are going to be catastrophic. And I think Trump is not doing this in the shadows.

I mean, we have stories that are just showing there's a plan.

And to my mind, the press has an obligation to report on that in, you know,

relentless, very visible ways that make sure that every voter understands the

stakes of this election, because I think that's really what this is all about, is

the stakes of American democracy.

the coverage is is weak is that we don't want to be seen as partisan.

And that is a very reasonable concern.

We we shouldn't be partisan.

And we're used to covering elections in which, you know, there's a pretty normal

Democrat and a pretty normal Republican.

You don't have that now.

So really what we're covering is not a Republican versus a Democrat.

But I mean, assuming that we end up with Biden versus Trump, which who knows.

But we're not covering a Republican versus a Democrat.

We're covering a would-be authoritarian versus sort of a normal pro-democracy

candidate. And I think if we reframe our coverage that way, which is a very

legitimate thing to do, we get away from that fear of being called partisan.

And, you know, I think it's fine.

You know, I think journalists need to sort of grow up a little bit and realize that

they may be called partisan.

The right wing apparatus is very, very good at making the press feel like it's

doing something wrong.

And I think we just have to be a little braver than that.

And get away from that fear.

start throwing around words, you know, words like fascism and things like this.

If you if you frame it in a way like the, you know, the election as like if Trump

wins, U.S.

democracy will fall.

Is that detrimental to constructive political dialogue?

And is there a risk that people will kind of just go, oh, you're just exaggerating?

You know, they tune it out because it's so extreme.

We do have an extreme situation and we do have a frightening situation.

So it makes sense to to tell it clearly and to not waffle.

I mean, one of the ways that the press kind of gets around that, which I think is not

good, is by saying critics say, you know, so there's a Washington Post headline about

the sort of post-election power grab that we're talking about that said critics have

called the ideas under consideration dangerous and unconstitutional.

Well, you know, that seems to sort of really downplay it and put it in a way that

feels, again, feels safe and OK and not partisan to traditional newsrooms and

traditional reporting.

And, you know, it just doesn't sort of get it across.

winning will cause democracy to die, that it leaves out a constructive political

dialogue? Because he Trump is very much representative of the Republican Party.

There are only two parties in this country.

You know, we're basically a two party country.

So how in what way, if you come out against Trump, does that leave off all of his

supporters and all Republicans?

comfortable for voters.

I think they have an obligation to frame things in ways that are true.

And this is not speculative.

I mean, Trump has inspired an insurrection where there was an attempt to not only attack

the Capitol, but a systematic attempt that he's being prosecuted for to overthrow an

election that he lost.

This is not speculation.

It happened. He's facing 91 felony indictments.

He's telegraphing the idea that he's going to use the formal power of the presidency to

go after his enemies, which he calls vermin and says he'll root out.

The press isn't supposed to coddle us.

The press is supposed to tell us what's happening.

And a lot of really bad stuff happens around the world when authoritarianism gets

invoked in the political system.

That's the moment we're in.

So, you know, if people don't understand that, then they're making a vote that's not

informed. And so my view about democracy is that one of the key aspects of democratic

systems is informed consent of the voters.

And that means that they have to know what's going on.

And this is not done in the shadows.

It's not speculation. It's not hyperbole.

I mean, this is stuff that's happened.

It's happening right now.

And I have studied authoritarianism around the world.

I've done field research all over the world where democracy is broken down.

And it is scary. I mean, it's really scary because the problem is when it goes away,

you don't get it back. It takes generations to rebuild.

It can die in one election.

And I don't think it's the case that, you know, Trump wins is going to lead to some

massive dictatorship on day one, which is, by the way, what Trump said he would be a

dictator on day one. But I do think it's going to lead to the breakdown of democracy.

And that will happen in a way that erodes the sort of integrity of our institutions.

Rule of law becomes hyper politicized.

People no longer have faith in the system.

I mean, Trump has talked about shutting down press outlets to criticize him.

So, you know, from my perspective, I don't really care about the framing in terms of

what's going to make people comfortable.

I care about what's true and what's important.

And these things are both true and important.

You know, I think the press has to make sure that people, when they go to the polls,

understand the stakes of this election.

It's not a normal election.

We'll be right back.

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We're back with The Sunday Story.

We're talking with Brian Kloss and Margaret Sullivan about how they think the media

should be covering former President Donald Trump as he runs again for office.

Margaret, you recently wrote an op-ed titled, The Public Doesn't Understand the Risk of

a Trump Victory.

That's the media's fault.

In it, you argue that if the public were more aware of Trump's platforms or Trump's

positions on issues like immigration or national security or gender affirming care,

that the public might be disinclined to support him.

I guess, why do you think that?

And do you think that it's possible that maybe a lot of people do understand exactly

what a former President Trump is offering and they want that?

I don't think they want to give that up.

And so there may be some agreement on issues, which that's fine.

But we're in a different realm here because of the very serious kinds of anti-democratic

things that we're talking about.

Granted, they may agree with him on a number of things, immigration and all of these kinds

of things. But I don't think that if Americans truly understood that they could lose

their democracy, that they would support that.

their coverage of Trump this election cycle?

Like, what are the some of the main things you think need to happen?

Brian, I'll start with you first.

And I think that does turn off people, because I think a lot of people look at some of

the ideas he's suggesting and they're not on board with them.

I mean, a certain part of his base is going to love whatever he says.

But a lot of other people, when they see Trump unfiltered, they're actually quite appalled

by it. Sometimes you just need to print what Trump is saying to people.

And I think that is so, so important.

It's also to describe the unprecedented nature of this election.

I think that's incredibly, incredibly important because that's where the critique about

partisanship just falls by the wayside.

I mean, none of the previous Republican candidates would have ever fathomed supporting the

idea of shooting shoplifters.

I mean, can you imagine what would have been the coverage if John McCain in his race with

Obama had said, oh, yes, we're going to execute people who commit petty crimes?

It would have been the biggest story in American politics for months.

And then it would have forced him out of the race.

So I think this is the kind of stuff we're depicting, the scale of the difference from

this election and the stakes of it.

That's the focus, not the horse race, not the polls, not who's up, who's down.

But what's important is the stakes of the election and what could happen depending on

how the American electorate decides in 2024.

you know, maybe some of them are doing it and maybe they're doing it a little.

But I think they need to get together with their politics staffs and their staffs in

general and talk about what I wrote my column about.

We the public is not getting the importance of this election.

They're not getting what the stakes and the consequences are.

How can we go about how can we go about changing that?

How can we get across the extreme nature of this?

And, you know, it has to do with emphasis.

It has to do with where you put stories, what kind of articles you do, what the

headlines are. But we're still sort of stuck in an old way of covering both sides,

trying very hard to make sure that no one ever says that we're partisan.

And it calls for a rethinking in newsrooms of how to communicate to our readers and

viewers and listeners.

Thank you both for joining us.

was edited by Ed McNulty and Jenny Schmidt.

The engineer for this episode was Maggie Luthar.

Our team includes Liana Simstrom, Justine Yan, and our executive producer is Irene

Noguchi. We always love hearing from you.

So feel free to reach out to us at TheSundayStory at NPR.org.

I'm Aisha Roscoe.

Up First is back tomorrow in your feed with all the news you need to start your week.

Until then, enjoy the rest of your weekend.