JOURNALISM AND TRUMP
By now, you’re asking: Does it really matter how many people showed up at the inauguration of Donald Trump (lots), or how many attended the Women’s March on Washington (lots)? Were the numbers truly worth the high-decibel snit that erupted between the news media and the U.S. administration over the weekend?
Yes and no. Details do matter. But what also should matter to journalists, or anyone who treats facts and reason as key tools of their craft, is the means and tone by which errors, misstatements or lies by public office-holders and officials are corrected.
An unexpected lesson in how to respond appropriately to “alternative facts” came this weekend from a Canadian source — and a politician at that: Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne.
Wynne is hardly without flaws, as many Ontarians looking at their hydro bills will agree. But when she wrote an open letter to federal Conservative leadership hopeful Kevin O’Leary, attempting to correct what she saw as flaws in his public pronouncements, she was both direct AND courteous. Her approach lacked sarcasm or cheap shots. She was resolutely respectful.
O’Leary had suggested Ontario lagged Michigan in auto sector investment. Wynne rebutted with numbers on the province’s auto production, then calmly challenged O’Leary’s stance on carbon taxes. She offered stats about business taxes. She closed her letter by “sincerely” welcoming him into politics, adding lightly: “I respect anyone who is willing to enter the den.”
We don’t take everything Ms. Wynne says at face value, and we think it’s overkill that her ministers are now writing, too, but what we do admire is her approach: low-key, firm, no hysteria.
To borrow the “broken windows” principle of policing, it is important that even small lies and misstatements be corrected, lest those who perpetrate them decide to try getting away with bigger lies. Stating that the number of people at your inauguration was the “largest audience to ever witness an inauguration” is incorrect. Journalists should respectfully clarify or correct it, and should decline to broadcast it over and over. What they shouldn’t do is treat it as the end of days.
The Trump administration is poised to make major changes to NAFTA, to Middle East and China policy, to a host of important global norms and practices. If lies, errors or “alternative facts” are floated, they’ll need correcting with speed and consistency. And above all, with professionalism. The challenge for the press will be ensuring that the decibel level fits the situation.