Trump’s tirades

Brian Hodder: While many previous presidents have experienced difficult relationships with the press, this president appears to have launched an all-out war with most elements of the media from the very beginning of his presidency and the situation has worsened over time.

Ever since Donald Trump was sworn in as U.S. president in January of this year, the relationship between the president and the media that covers his presidency has undergone a dramatic transformation and it is no longer clear where the boundaries are and who to believe about the sometimes conflicting messages that have been coming out of the White House.

While many previous presidents have experienced difficult relationships with the press, this president appears to have launched an all-out war with most elements of the media from the very beginning of his presidency and the situation has worsened as the months have passed. This is not a healthy situation and if it continues, may become one of the most damaging legacies of his presidency.

I made a very conscious decision back in January to not write about Donald Trump until enough time had passed to get a real feel for how his presidency will play out.

Despite the fireworks and rhetoric exhibited during the election campaign, I thought that the responsibility of the office would moderate some of his characteristics and that he would eventually settle into the business of governing the nation — as opposed to governing a business — and working with the others elected in other roles.

This has clearly not been the case and it seems that his sense of his own importance and need to be the centre of attention has only become more deeply entrenched the longer he is president. While he can fire or find other ways to get rid of those around him, he can’t fire the media outlets who don’t agree with his opinions so he attacks their very existence with accusations of “fake news” or outright refuses to answer their questions at all.

Over the course of this year, I have been amazed at the level of coverage this president has received and it seems that almost daily, all other news was interrupted or supplanted whenever the latest pronouncement or tweet by the president was made.

It got to the point where I was so tired of seeing his face and hearing his voice that I changed the channel whenever this happened and now get most of my information on Trump from print media. I believe that this type of incessant coverage of Trump by the media is a mistake as it feeds into his over-inflated ego and provides the cannon fodder he needs to continue his attack on the mainstream media, to the detriment of truth and the essential role of the media in uncovering the truth.

In the past couple of weeks, as hurricanes Harvey and Irma have wreaked devastation of parts of the U.S. and the Caribbean Islands, things have returned a little to some semblance of normalcy. These natural disasters have become the story and while how Trump responds to them has been part of the story, it has only been a small part and it has been in proportion to the role of his office and has allowed him to be the president first and not Trump first.

There is a much healthier balance between the coverage of the story and the response of Trump which could point the way to how covering his presidency can be improved going forward; unfortunately, it took events of great devastation and death to restore some of this balance.

It will not be easy to maintain any balance around covering this president because whenever he speaks or tweets, the parameters may change and new policies may be revealed. This needs to be covered and it is the role of media to report and to critique what positions the U.S president is taking.

That doesn’t mean that we drop everything else every time he does something to report immediately on the latest Trump news item. This has been happening since he was elected and it is has led to a war in which both sides may come out on the losing end; since Trump seems unwilling or unable to change, the media may need to change its approach to covering him.