When even German media has noticed that the American press is going a bit soft on the populist political novice surging toward high office, it’s perhaps wise to take the admonition to heart.

A recent Der Spiegel essay via Holger Stark is a stinging indictment of the American press for allowing Donald Trump to get as far as he has without a comprehensive examination of the decades the bon vivant real estate heir spent gracing the covers of New York City’s tabloids. Those in the journalism business who acknowledge that Trump’s lurid past has gone largely uninvestigated in much of the nearly $2 billion worth of free media coverage the celebrity candidate has earned also say that there is plenty of blame to go around for that condition. They’ll note that Trump’s rival campaigns and even the Democrats have taken a similar hands-off approach. That is true, but the incentive structures for campaigns and the illustrious Fourth Estate are supposed to be distinct. At least, that is the elusive ideal.

Stark makes a comprehensive case for his thesis, but his opening paragraph is what reaches out and grabs the reader by the lapels. He noted that Trump has made a habit of singling out reporters, often by name, and attacking their personal integrity. He and his campaign have made a foil of the industry of political journalism, and reporters who cover Trump’s raucous rallies have been made to feel unsafe by the seething crowds whipped up into a froth by the avatar of their rebellion.

Trump has become a sort of weaponized version of conservative political entertainment. His followers’ aggression toward reporters can reasonably be seen as a bastardized rendition of the conservative talker class’ acknowledgment of and aversion toward liberal media bias. It is thus not unreasonable to suggest that the right’s critiques of mainstream media have perhaps gone too far. Trump’s liberal critics are surely making the most of an opportunity to invalidate all criticism of journalism and cast observations of bias as merely the fevered passions of conspiracy theorists. But, to the extent that no discomfiting truth about Trump resonates with his fans, it may be because they have been primed for years to reject the notion of objective truth – at least, not the kind that printed a major city daily or broadcast on network television.

The kind of revenge fantasy against the political press indulged by Trump certainly resonates with a segment on the right, but the antagonism on display from the GOP frontrunner and his team is unique. Moreover, it largely goes unchallenged by his targets. On Tuesday night, after another slew of narrow Trump victories in a handful of states, inching him ever closer toward the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, Donald Trump demonstrated his mastery of the art of contempt for the press by standing shoulder-to-shoulder with his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski.

Lewandowski has been accused in a criminal complaint of attacking former Breitbart reporter Michelle Fields, but Trump has not been made to account for the fact that his campaign manager remains on the payroll. Fields filed her criminal complaint in Jupiter, Florida, where the state’s attorney general just endorsed her alleged attacker’s employer. “Good job, Corey,” Trump said, prompting the audience full of reporters to endure applause for a man who allegedly attacked one of their own. And with that, what was billed to be a press conference ended; Trump and Lewandowski walked off stage without taking a single question. One almost certainly would have addressed the candidate’s support for his embattled campaign manager.

You might expect the reportorial establishment to bristle at this obvious taunt. But when Donald Trump joined four separate morning shows by telephone on Wednesday morning, not one of them asked about the criminal complaint against the most important figure in his campaign. It would be a mistake to dismiss this impulse on the part of journalistic outlets as laudable disregard for their narrow self-interest. Not only is it of great value to the public to know what Trump thinks about the accusations against his employee, but that Trump’s competence as an employer is central to the premise that he could also be a competent executive. In lieu of a record in government, Trump contends that he would simply fire those in the public sector deserving of dismissal (as though it were that easy) and hire those who deserve employment. The celebrity candidate has, however, never had to face a withering, multi-day news cycle centered on any of his myriad controversies, let alone his mulish refusal to address the seriousness of the charge that one of his closest advisors assaulted a female reporter.

Stark surely has a point. The U.S. news media has allowed Trump to make a sport of his antagonism toward their industry. A thorough investigation into his decades-long record of improprieties and the broken people he left in his wake will one day merit wall-to-wall coverage, but not today. On Wednesday, Trump announced that Lewandowski had managed to make himself a pledged Trump delegate to the GOP nominating convention in Cleveland. If there are consequences for keeping such a controversial subject near him, Trump doesn’t believe he will ever have to suffer them. Not, at least, at the hands of an impotent press who he routinely humiliates and threatens to the delight of the crowds. Who could blame him for making such an arrogant presumption?

+ A A -
You may also like
Share via
Copy link