Does the Media Inadvertently Help Trump? Of Course It Does

Ever since people started taking Donald Trump’s campaign seriously as a campaign, rather than a short-term PR stunt for summer 2015, there’s been a great deal of debate about the media’s role in his rise. Obviously, the vast majority of writers, editors, talking heads, and other tastemakers in the mainstream and establishment-conservative media do not want Donald Trump to become president. Many of them have told us as much emphatically, repeatedly, exasperatedly. He is frequently and loudly proclaimed to be an arrogant, proudly ignorant, self-aggrandizing, bigoted buffoon with as little regard for the vital norms of democracy as he has for his opponents, or for even the most basic grasp of public policy. But pointing that out — and playing and replaying video of him proving it — doesn’t hurt him. It helps him. And it helps him in several concrete ways:

1. It’s an avalanche of free media. The attention is a huge advantage in getting his message and his name out there, as it would be to any candidate. And remember, Trump doesn’t make gaffes. The over-the-top rhetoric that gets him all this coverage is not a distraction from his message. It is the message.
2. The coverage is so deafening it comes at the expense of his opponents’ exposure (as well as other news). It’s harder for other candidates to get their messages and their names out there because airtime, column inches, social media feeds, and journalistic resources that might otherwise have been devoted to them are instead going to Trump. Who, let’s remember, was already far better known to the public than the John Kasichs of the world. The problem has been compounded by the unwieldy number of Republicans who ran this cycle, all vying for fractions of whatever attention is left after the Trump show.
3. It gives him added credibility with the specific group of voters he’s targeting: those who hate and fear the kind of major institutions (media, political, intellectual, corporate, international…) that have been trying so desperately to veto his candidacy. Every denunciation from the New York Times Editorial Board, every alarm-sounding by Rachel Maddow, every inquisition by Megyn Kelly, and every condemnation by Mitt Romney, is a positive for Trump among his base: low-education white voters and far right fringe, who believe the nation’s and world’s elite institutions are out to get them, to dupe them, to destroy their way of life and to dismantle everything about their culture and their country in which they take pride. This includes the anomalously accurate belief that major conservative institutions like the US Chamber of Commerce, and establishment-conservative media outlets like Fox News, are primarily concerned with the interests of the elite business community and mostly just pay lip service to the social issues and blue-collar-white economic anxieties that drive so much of the Republican electorate. Whether or not one believes, as liberal intellectuals have for years, that lower-class Republicans vote against their own interests, it is manifestly true that the Republican Party’s leaders do not prioritize those interests — even with conservative policies — when they are in office.

Now that we’ve established that it helps Trump, it’s worth asking whether all this coverage is wrong. After all, he is a major presidential candidate who frequently says and does things that are newsworthy. And he’s genuinely interesting. The Trump show is good television. Talking about Trump is fun. Here I am writing about him instead of, say, the more-than-ten-percent of bridges in the country that are officially classified as dangerously deficient. But I’m just a blogger, and my blog doesn’t have ads. The institutional Media, on the other hand, has to make money. That means viewers (television), listeners (radio), pageviews (web), and purchases/subscriptions (print). When Trump says he’s great for ratings, that’s actually true. Talking about Trump is good for business. It makes money. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong, or that any particular news organization is letting its financial imperatives impact its editorial decisions. But it’s a question that should be asked. Because whether or not Trump gets more attention than he should, it is clear that the attention is good for him.