Fourth Estate Dereliction of Duty: Influential Newspaper Editors Normalize President Trump’s Refusal To Affirm His Oath To Defend the Constitution. A case study.
New York Times, Washington Post & Wall Street Journal editors did not make Trump’s “I don’t know” interview a front page story. Several local editors did give it prominence and did a better job.
“I will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Oath sworn by Donald Trump Jan 20, 2025
On May 4, 2025 President Donald Trump was interviewed by Kristen Welker on NBC’s Meet the Press. In a startling and memorable exchange, the President refused to affirm whether he would enforce the law of the land of “due process” as codified in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution ““...nor shall…any person … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”. The President’s refusal to clearly affirm his Executive duty to uphold due process to protect citizens and non-citizens alike is a scandal and part of an expanding constitutional crisis.
In a second, even more infamous part of the interview, President Trump refused to answer another crucial question any President should answer with unambiguous clarity: “Don’t you need to uphold the Constitution?” President Trump responded with an answer that should live in infamy, “I don’t know.” In both action and word Trump has made clear that he does not preserve, protect, or defend our constitutional right to due process as an obligation nor does he acknowledge his duty to uphold the Constitution itself.
A President refusing—or unaware of—his fundamental Executive duties warrants Front Page coverage
A president who refuses to explicitly commit to—or is ignorant of—his constitutional duties is a crisis and warrants prominent, persistent and ongoing follow-up news coverage. America is in a full-fledged constitutional crisis and editors are not sufficiently communicating this reality. By not doing so, these editors are failing to defend the Constitution through normalization.
The Media and Democracy Project team used the freedomforum.org library to examine all available front pages the day after the NBC interview (5/5/2025), We searched for any outlets that had any coverage of “due process” and/or “oath” and/or “Constitution”; we excluded outlets owned by the same company that duplicated their front pages, and also local outlets that had no coverage of the interview. We observed in real-time that online versions of major national outlets had negligible and transient coverage of the interview. Our survey captured only outlets with print editions (plus the syndicated Associated Press) and was limited by the number of outlets included in the library. We applied a basic 5-point scoring/grading system to quantify the editorial choices 1) front page (yes/no, 1 point and mandatory), strident headline (1 point), language / framing (“constitution” / “oath”, 2 points; “due process” 1 point), prominence on A1 (1 point). The results can be seen in slides here and montage video below. The video contains 20+ front pages, closeups of the front page coverage, editorial grades, and for local outlets the source of syndicated copy used (no sound).
Observations:
Front pages are a window into the editorial decisions and biases of the most senior editors in a news organization. Every inch of a front page is meticulously curated: what is covered, what isn’t covered and how stories are framed, the language of the headline, and the total area devoted to the story. The New York Times has a daily meeting strategizing the layout of its influential front page; time lapse video.
We think it dereliction of duty that the most senior editors at the influential New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal continually fail to prioritize and to communicate with requisite clarity the ongoing constitutional crisis and danger posed by President Trump in the Welker interview. We found that of the local newspapers covering the story on A1, their editors did a much better job choosing prominent placement, headlines, and coverage. We found it striking that local editors used syndicated copy from the national outlets in the body of their stories—but mostly did a better job than the syndicating news organizations themselves in presenting the stories. (These findings also are consistent with our observations that local news outlets are doing a better job covering the pro-democracy movement and mass demonstrations—see our “coverage of the coverage” for the national mass mobilizations on April 5 and April 19.)
It is clear that the most influential editors in the country—despite much greater resources—are distorting Americans' understanding both of the constitutional crisis and the essential pro-democracy movement.
Editorial Lowlights:
A.G. Sulzberger’s New York Times: Grade D
“All the news that’s fit to print”
—Minimized the interview with a miniature one-sentence box at bottom of A1, centering “due process” rather than constitutional crisis; gave a TikTok influencer much more prominent coverage; chose to bury the more powerful headline “I don’t know” when asked about “due process” and upholding the Constitution” on page A13. It’s baffling that a New York Times editor approved the strident headline but simultaneously did not advocate for the story to run on A1. Story Link
UPDATE: On May 6, 2025 the New York Times Editorial Board weighed in on the interview with a misdirection of the constitutional crisis, choosing to focus on the less urgent issue of Trump “running for a third term” in 2028. It is stunning the Editorial Board would write this piece about a possible future threat without mentioning the clear and present current danger of Trump’s failure to accept his duty to uphold “due process” and the Constitution itself right now.
Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post: Grade F
“Democracy dies in darkness”
—The “darkness” is partly caused by Murdoch crony Sir Will Lewis’s Washington Post editorial team who do not consider a U.S. President refusing to honor his oath to defend the constitution worthy of any mention at all on A1.
—Editors did mention the “Trump-as-Pope” meme and included a huge spread on autocrat Jair Bolsonaro instead on A1.
—Ran an excellent story with a solid headline on A2. The editor accepted the accurately framed headline “Trump says “I don’t know” when asked if he’s required to uphold the Constitution” yet still did not advocate for placing it on A1. Story Link
Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal - Grade D
—Minimized the interview with a miniature one-sentence at left margin among many on A1, flowery language; Newark Airport given much more prominent coverage.
—Piece itself included accurate “‘I don’t know’ if he must uphold the Constitution”, yet not deemed worthy of prominent A1 coverage and appeared on A4. Story Link
Editorial Highlights:
Local editors did much better than editors of the national outlets, often using the same, syndicated copy
Many local outlets rely on syndication of copy from the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today and the Associated Press. Local editors seemingly felt more duty to their readers and to the Constitution. They made the story much more prominent on their front pages with several headlines reflecting the urgency readers deserve. We were surprised to see how all local outlets that covered this story that we found relied on syndicated copy for the story. There were five “A” grades: the Philadelphia Inquirer, Kennebec Journal, Santa Fe New Mexican, Asheville Citizen-Times and the Burlington Free-Press. Editors at 19 additional local outlets covered the story better than their peers at the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal but received “B”s and “C”s. All of them featured the story much more prominently than the national outlets—even though using the exact same copy. Some local editors made the headline even more strident, thus upgrading the impact of the headline.
Passing Grades:
USA Today - Grade B
—Excellent headline. Limited coverage to once sentence. More prominent coverage of Sean “Diddy” Combs trial. Story Link
Associated Press - Grade B (online only)
—Positioned for most of the day at the top of the homepage. Emphasized due process “rights.” Was the most widely-used syndicated copy by local outlets. Story Link
This Is A Constitutional Crisis, FFS! Coverage Must Reflect This!
American democracy cannot withstand the fascistic anti-democratic movement aligned with oligarchs at war with American democracy without a dramatic and heroic pro-democracy re-calibration by newsroom leaders. The old news-making habits and “neutrality theater” of the vast majority of news organizations for the last 100+ days is imperceptibly different despite this being an existential polycrisis.
Coverage of President Trump’s refusal to declare support for constitutionally-mandated right to due process and his “I don’t know” his oath to uphold the Constitution was a litmus test of newsroom leaders of coverage of the expanding constitutional crisis. Any news organization (and editor) that did not get an “A” covering the “I don’t know” interview prominently actually deserves an “F”—for failing to defend the Constitution. All outlets get an “F” for failing to follow up as this was barely a one day story.
There is an additional editorial dereliction to provide follow-up and relevant context. The week prior to the Welker interview, Trump was untethered from reality in an ABC/Disney interview with Terry Moran (h/t to Aaron Rupar at Public Notice for documenting the full exchange). Trump repeatedly insisted that doctored (“Photoshopped”) letters/numbers on the hand of illegally-abducted Kilmar Abrego Garcia spelled out “MS13.” Editors are distorting and depriving Americans of the reality of President Trump by serving as a gatekeeper of the reality of his unfitness and failure to uphold his oath to defend the Constitution.
We think it’s time that publishers and editors meet the moment and re-calibrate—not just to report the news but to defend the Constitution specifically by expanding regular ongoing coverage of the constitutional crises. A great first step would be to start a new section called "Democracy Under Siege” to join “Metro,” “Sports,” “Business,” and “Style,” with Front Page positioning every day.
Share some of your ideas and feedback with us info@mediaanddemocracyproject.org
Yes, this most certainly should have been front page news in BOLD headlines! As time goes on and he continues to make these statements it gets normalized. But this is NOT normal and should not be accepted. It should also have been the leading story on broadcast news. Truthfully I am scared for our country, a country that my father gave his life for in WWII.
Bravo! It pains me that my hometown paper, the NYT, still doesn’t get it. Politesse and protocol get you just so far and even tho the Times is talking to the choir, it still needs to more aggressively call out the lies and sharpen its focus. I’ve given up on the Post. I miss some of the reporters but the editorial voice is putting the owner’s profits ahead of principle.