How the media should treat the Biden presidency
The tumultuous reign of Donald J. Trump is ending as it was destined to end.
He has done to the American presidency what General Sherman did to Atlanta in 1864. He has torched everything of value. He has laid waste to the ideals long treasured in our great neighbour to the south. He will have no challengers to the title of WEPOTUS — Worst Ever President of the United States.
There is no doubt how the media should treat him as an ex-president. Ignore him. Do not rush to him for a comment on every issue that pops up. Do not report on what his fevered brain posts on social media (should he ever have his accounts unlocked). Making his views irrelevant and insignificant would be a gift to civil society. The next time I’m willing to hear from Trump is when he’s whining about how unfair it is that he’s going to prison.
As we turn the page from his sordid administration, it’s a good time to consider how the media should treat the Joe Biden presidency.
When Trump moved into the White House, reporters and editors tried to adhere to the unwritten standards of the past. Even when the president insulted them to their face — “You’re fake news,” he told CNN’s Jim Acosta and the Washington Post’s Philip Rucker; “You’re so disgraceful,” he said to CBS’s Paula Reid — they continued to show respect by calling him “Mr. President.”
It wasn’t until the past few weeks of his presidency that many news organizations allowed their journalists to say that Trump had “lied” about something or other. For years they used “falsehood” or “untruth,” or simply pointed out that he had said something “without evidence.”
Trump did so many outrageous, undignified and even criminal things as president, we became numb to it all. There was barely time to point out one egregious act before he would perpetrate another, and then another and another.
There are now two possible routes for the media to take. The first is to revert to the way things used to be before Trump was sworn in. Watch every move Biden makes, parse his every word, blow up every less-than-perfect moment into a “scandal.”
Barack Obama was criticized for allowing a marine to hold an umbrella over his head during a rainstorm, for “wasting taxpayer’s money” by flying to New York to see a Broadway show with his wife, for wearing a helmet while riding a bike — “humiliating,” as Fox’s Sean Hannity described it — and for not wearing a jacket in the Oval Office.
The alternate route is to compare any of Biden’s “failings” to the things that Trump did, and conclude that almost nothing Biden does is as bad. He is unlikely, for example, to pardon criminals who lied to the FBI on his behalf, lock up children in cages at the Mexican border, mock the record of a genuine American patriot (John McCain was a “war hero only because he was captured”), ban travel by Muslims into the U.S., award the Medal of Freedom to a racist, sexist, homophobic radio hate-monger (Rush Limbaugh), and of course incite an insurrection against the government of the United States.
I could go on, but you get the point. If the 45th president is the measuring stick for the 46th, Biden gets a pass for almost anything. My view is that neither of those strategies is proper.
Instead, we need a blend of the two. Start with the assumption that the president of the United States is not a know-nothing egomaniac who lies more often than he brushes his teeth. Show him respect. But he should be held to a much higher standard than Trump. That bar is so low a snake could get over it.
Let’s stop manufacturing a crisis out of every alleged misstep. The job of a journalist is to inform the public, not to lead a pack of wolves eager to create the next faux the-sky-is-falling moment.
News organizations are watchdogs, not ringmasters. The circus is leaving town. There’s still some cleaning up to do around the elephants. Then it’s time to remember the principles of a vibrant democracy.