News Media May be Fighting Back

The idea that Donald Trump has ‘used’ the media has been for the most part in the abstract. We’re pretty sure he’s playing us. We’re happy to show his rallies, report his Tweets as news, and to put on TV and in print the words of his surrogates (that never ending tribe of clarifiers, apologists and show people.) He’s entertaining; he says outrageous things (some would suggest he says things that you wouldn’t allow your children to say at the dinner table); he’s been good for the ratings; his bombastic campaign rhetoric got the attention of a good number of disaffected voters. In short, he’s been good television, and the TV networks were happy to ride along. They got more viewers, they made more money.

[What should not be lost I think is some very good reporting by the networks and by legacy outlets such as the Washington Post and the New York Times as well as many other online and hybrid outlets.]

Trump met a threshold Friday that might just be a turning point in his relationship with the news media, especially but not exclusive to, the electronic news journalists who have been conflicted about Trump’s continued presence on their respective news channels. He gathered news people at his new hotel in Washington, D.C., under the guise — those present say they were told this — of a press availability. In other words, he would take questions.

Instead, Trump spent 29 minutes talking about his hotel, bringing on veterans in what was clearly a half-hour of free TV news time to promote his business and his campaign. Then, he uttered the words that many expected to hear: “President Obama was born in the United States.” And walked away. Before that comment, he repeated the already debunked notion that Hillary Clinton started the ‘birther’ movement back in 2008. Then, the news camera pool producer was not allowed to follow the camera into the ‘tour of the hotel,’ so the networks all pulled the camera and agreed not to show any footage of the hotel photo op. A collective backbone not shown often by the news media in this campaign. The battle for the eyeballs, the hits, the Re-Tweets has been fierce.

We in the news media are not taking sides by reporting the truth. We are not taking sides by saying that a candidate is not telling the truth. We are not taking sides when we suggest that the candidate — in this obvious format — is using the news media. And in this case, Trump flipped on his birther position hours after he had mocked the news reporters for not making an event in New Hampshire. The reporters were held up at the airport, and Trump started his event without them. And in that little speech to the rally, he appeared to be gleeful about their absence. They did make it for the last three minutes of his campaign performance.

A Gallup Poll recently confirmed what most of us know, that people are less trustful of the news than ever. Thirty-two percent have trust in the media, a little more than half of Democrats have trust but only 14 percent of Republicans. It’s divisive, like the campaigns, apparently like the country.

In this campaign considerable focus has been on the media. There are so many outlets, so many places to get the news, so much of it on social media, you can get it on You Tube, on your phone, on Twitter, and on Snapchat. And, you can get it in traditional places, like the TV or newspapers. The best reporting continues to be done by the traditional news sources and we know fewer people are buying newspapers. In my opinion the best journalism continues to be done by newspapers.

One hopes that the people in this country expect more from their candidates and expect truth-telling and truth-reporting from their news reporters. But, we know that people tend to get their news from sources that confirm their views rather than challenge them.

We have a lot to get through: Three 24 hour news channels, thousands of online outlets, talk radio blasting in your ears, opinion TV news shows skewing the truths of the candidates, and everybody tweeting the truths, half-truths and un-truths that fit their narrative.

Professional news observers need to stop chasing the dollar, the hits, and social media followers and do what they do — report the truth.

You might say, “It’s the kind of journalism that was born in the United States. Period.”