Good News, Bad News: May 24, 2024
With 164 days left until Election Day we need political coverage that uplifts and defends democracy.
Every week until the election, we’ll compare our pro-democracy election coverage guidelines with ongoing election coverage to highlight which newsrooms are standing up for democracy and which are sleepwalking us towards a dictatorship. We hope this inspires you to make more informed choices about where you get your news and strengthens your resolve to join us in advocating for the pro-democracy media Americans need. And now…
THE GOOD NEWS
Corporate Media Finally Calling Trump’s Anti-Democracy Behavior ‘Not Normal’
I get it. I repeat the reality of Trump’s coup attempt ad nauseam in this column. I guess I feel the need to compensate for the failures of our nation’s corporate media outlets, who have spent the last three years treating Trump more like a suitable candidate for office than someone who sought to destroy our democracy with lies and political violence.
In fits and starts, newsrooms within our mainstream media ecosystem are overcoming their reticence to call Trump’s actions abnormal (only took 8 years!). This change is significant. We understand issues and politics at the national level based on what we see and hear in the news. How else to explain the phenomenon of 70% of Americans saying the economy’s bad while their own finances are in good order?
As a nation, our feelings about prominent politicians are based on how the media industry treats them. For example, most people in the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut knew Donald Trump was a con-man in 2015. The rest of the country, exposed to Trump mostly via The Apprentice entertainment program, misunderstood him to be a successful businessman.
This is why Rachel Scott’s reporting on Good Morning America this week was so important. That’s right, Good Morning America, a television program whose logo appears in the dictionary next to the word ‘anodyne,’ led the way for the rest of the news industry in reporting on Trump’s social media post that promised a “unified Reich” if he is elected in November.
Scott led off her report with this:
“It is normal, of course, for presidential candidates to share videos with their vision for the country. It is not normal for those videos to have references to Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler.”
In a concise report, Scott gave viewers the context of what the Third Reich means historically, named other instances when Trump had associated himself with White Supremacy, and mentioned multiple times that, despite his team’s claim that it was posted in error, the video had yet to be taken down by the former president.
When the journalists on our screens say disqualifying behavior is wrong, that it isn’t normal, it gives Americans a little more permission to step up and tell friends and neighbors the same. So thank you to Rachel Scott and Good Morning America for standing up for decency and democracy.
Reality check: Pre-2010, this news would have instantly led to media outrage and pressure that would have forced Trump from the race. Remember, Howard Dean had to bow out of the primaries in 2004 because he made a weird noise, once. Hilary Clinton engaged in private email server use that newsrooms chose not to make a massive scandal for the likes of Colin Powell and Condaleezza Rice.
Newsrooms can make a big deal out of, and paint as a beyond the pale scandal, anything they want. That they have not made those choices for Trump suggest a willful desire not to. Trump has attempted a coup, raped someone, lied tens of thousands of times, caused untold and needless deaths with COVID pandemic mishandling, and stolen from a kid’s cancer charity. That you or I may know about these things does not mean they have been covered with appropriate frequency or prominence. Too often Trump’s outrageous criminal and anti-democratic behavior has been whitewashed and normalized. Simply put, in the pursuit of profit, our national media has refused to show any kind of moral backbone with regard to the former president. A corporate, commercialized system for informing the public is, clearly, a terrible idea.
Fixing our information ecosystem requires a holistic approach that includes, among other things, a more robustly funded public media, innovative policy approaches like the Local News Funding Act, a reinvigoration of FCC protections against media ownership consolidation, and people like you and me making more active, healthier media diet choices. Consult our Local Journalism Directory and subscribe to a worthwhile outlet here.
Honorable Mentions (other pro-democracy coverage of note this week):
The Political Scene: ‘The Most Profoundly Not-Normal Facts About Trump’s 2024 Campaign’ - Sensing a normalization theme this week? Everyone has a podcast, including the New Yorker’s Susan B. Glasser, wife of worst-celebrity-journalist-in-the-world, Peter Baker. While she didn’t marry well, kudos must be extended to Glasser and her fellow journalists, Jane Mayer and Evan Osnos. They spent a half hour of their lives telling their audience about how abnormal Donald Trump’s campaign is. I’m not sure where this streak of anti-normalization is coming from, but America needs it.
Applicable MAD Guideline: Call out lies and bad behavior in every piece of reporting.
Capital B: ‘Gary’s 2024 Primary Voting Totals: A Neighborhood Breakdown’ - Capital B gave its readers a fine-grained breakdown of voter turnout in 8 neighborhoods of Gary, Indiana. This is essential information that, among other things, allows civic-minded residents to know if they need to step up their get-out-the-vote efforts.
Applicable MAD Guidelines: Celebrate and uplift election workers, voters, and the election process.
Jennifer Schulze: ‘Voters still aren’t getting the full story on Trump. Journalists need to fix that ASAP’ - Schulze has emerged as a powerful voice in support of pro-democracy journalism. In this essential opinion piece she writes: “As we barrel towards the most consequential presidential election in modern time, I hope it’s not too late to fix this problem. It starts with taking what Trump says seriously then reporting it fearlessly with context, clarity and ample fact checks. At the same, paying equal attention to the sitting president of the United States is also important. Only then will voters get the information they urgently need.”
Applicable MAD Guidelines: Every guideline under the heading, Make Threats To Democracy Clear
THE BAD NEWS
Lots of Media Still Normalizing Candidate Trump
Just one more time for folks in the back. Donald Trump has bragged about sexual assault, promised to be a dictator on day one, been found liable for rape, attempted to ban Muslims, says that a subset of the population are poisoning the blood of our country, lies that his political opponents support infanticide, is responsible for mass death due to his mishandling of the COVID pandemic, and, oh yeah, he attempted a violent and deadly coup. Despite these real things that Trump really did, Calder McHugh wrote this last week for Politico:
It’s impossible to know exactly how Trump will behave if he returns to office. By all accounts, Trump has professionalized his 2024 campaign, suggesting he learned something from his slapdash first campaign and his 2020 reelection loss. The question is whether his views on presidential prerogatives have changed or whether he intends to be guided by loftier principles. (bolding mine)
Reality check: Honestly, you’d have to be a MAGA sympathizer to even conceive that Trump could be “guided by loftier principles” at this stage. The premise of this article was that McHugh was surprised by revelations about Trump and his inner circle that emerged during his election interference trial. He wrote: “…it’s still possible to be shocked by the campaign’s operation and the former president’s transactional approach to every aspect of life.” Is it, Calder? Okay, it may be technically possible for a person to be shocked by new anecdotes about a rapist who attempted a coup, but, like, should a professional journalist admit that publicly? What’s truly shocking is that we’ve gone so far down the media normalization rabbit hole that Donald Trump has a chance to achieve his fascist dreams this fall.
Dishonorable Mentions (other election coverage failures this week):
Media Matters finds major outlets whitewashed Trump’s quid pro quo with oil execs - According to Media Matters, “mainstream news outlets…failed to post on Facebook and/or TikTok about former President Donald Trump’s reported promise to reverse President Joe Biden's actions on climate change as he asked oil executives to raise $1 billion for his presidential campaign. However, days later, these same mainstream outlets posted about Vice President Kamala Harris’ use of an expletive during a health forum discussion for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander organizations.” This basically tells you everything you need to know about how our corporate, commercialized information system incentivizes clickbait. The Kamala Harris story is a much easier headline to turn into clickbait. It’s also much less important than Trump’s climate-destroying backroom deal.
Applicable MAD Guideline: Hold politicians to account for their positions, statements, and behavior
Dan Froomkin and Mark Elliot: New York Times boosts Trump, applies different standard for Trump malfeasance - Tireless press critic, Dan Froomkin, pointed out that the Times failed to make Trump’s decision not to testify front page news. Mark Elliot noted that while Hilary Clinton’s far less egregious security oversights were frequently featured on the Times’ front page in 2016, major news about Trump’s mishandling of documents is omitted.
Applicable MAD Guideline: Hold politicians to account for their positions, statements, and behavior, as well as those of their party’s leader.
Extra Credit: Pro-Democracy Video Of The Week
I made the above video this week because the original CNN: New Day segment has haunted me since I first saw it in April of 2021. I view it as a Rosetta Stone by which we can all access the concept of media normalization. While most Americans, including these presenters, did not have access at the time to the video footage I spliced in, they knew the Capitol insurrection had taken place, that Trump had incited it with a rally speech and months of lying, that Proud Boys were in the crowd after Trump had told them to ‘stand by,’ that the halls of Congress were ransacked and human feces had been spread on the walls, that the vice president was threatened with hanging, that it was a violent attempt to reject the outcome of a free and fair election, and that multiple people had died. Only three months later, this was how they chose to cover the only president to have ever attempted a coup. None of what happened on January 6th was normal. In fact, it was unconscionable. And yet Brianna Keilar, John Berman, and Gabby Orr made it normal. They should be ashamed.
Democracy’s Survival Requires That Newsrooms Reset to Focus on What’s at Stake
You can be part of the solution. We’re attaching our pro-democracy guidelines to an open letter for you to sign on to. This letter will be distributed to the leadership of all major news organizations. The guidelines serve as a model of what pro-democracy election coverage can—and should—look like. Signing our letter ensures that your frustrations with media’s failure to stand up for American democracy will be heard loud and clear.
Help others advocate for positive change. Share the letter and guidelines with friends, civic organizations, and everyone who cares about the future of America. Ask them to sign on. Demanding better media is an action we must all take.
Tired of paying for corporate media that doesn’t stand up for democracy? Redirect those funds to quality local journalism. Use our Local Journalism Directory to find an outlet and subscribe.
Excellent work. Grateful you're in this fight.
Thank you Brian.