CRITICAL THINKING
How much press should journalists give former President Donald Trump now that he’s out of office? . . . . . . . . . .
A:For four years, every word uttered, action taken, and tweet sent by Donald Trump dictated the day’s media coverage. I hope that changes, though I am unsure whether journalists will have much of a choice, once a reality star president, always a reality star president. Whether
Trump migrates back to reality television, joins the ranks of conservative talk show radio hosts or starts his own news network, he seems unlikely to fade into the (relative) obscurity of a private citizen that the past two presidents largely have.
Those erratic, erroneous tweets that we’ve become all too accustomed to? I don’t think they should appear above the fold. But
I anticipate retrospective journalism to blossom, with deeper dives into Trump’s finances, pandemic response and relationships to Russia, among other stories. Reporters, however, must provide the Biden administration with the same critical scrutiny and the same in-depth coverage as the preceding one.
Trumpism will far outlive the Trump presidency and to ignore that fact—to be lulled into a sense of complacency and “normalcy” that a Biden administration may seem to indicate—would be a grave mistake for news organizations. Covering a real-world caricature like Trump is easy, but I hope journalists opt to push themselves to do the harder work of self-reflecting and acknowledging (and correcting) the distrust of the media that Trump sowed.
Journalists have done a better job of covering those who helped elect Trump in the first place, and I hope they don’t think the value of covering those communities is lost without him at the helm. I also worry that communities already left behind in newsrooms and coverage — Black, Latinx, queer and immigrant communities, among others—may be further alienated if the news industry goes back to “the status quo.” It is imperative that journalists have real, hard and necessary conversations about language (calling a spade a spade and a liar a liar), recognize the harsh limitations of “objectivity” and work to accurately reflect the communities they serve.
A:That newsroom leaders are even contemplating this question is a little concerning for our already struggling industry.
While we would be hard-pressed to find another presidential administration that has been more damaging and threatening to the First Amendment and America’s free press, allowing President Donald Trump’s relentless attack on the Fourth Estate to influence how we do our jobs would be more devastating.
The simple and obvious answer is we treat Trump as any other public figure and cover what’s newsworthy. With his history of baseless and outright wrong claims, leaving office doesn’t diminish Trump’s ability to skew a large segment of public opinion and perception. Allowing it to continue without a free press to fact check isn’t an acceptable alternative.
The challenge is not allowing bias against or for Trump to cloud our news judgment in reporting on newsworthy events. Nor should we pander to any particular slant on how our readers consume and interpret the news, despite increasing social media pressure to do so.
As president, Trump has made plenty of news and as a former president is likely to continue to be a newsmaker. Striking that balance of how much weight to give his sometimes outlandish and baseless claims is going to be an evolving challenge.
On one hand, allocating too many resources and attention to storylines that push agendas more than report news can cause even more distrust and derision of the press. Ignoring them altogether poses the same risk.
When I saw this question, the first analogy that came to mind is an infection.
If a person develops an infection, not giving it any attention and ignoring it only allows it to fester, grow and become a larger problem. But without proper medical treatment, too much prodding, poking, scratching and rubbing can potentially spread the infection and also make it worse.
In this scenario, journalism is the closest thing we have to that proper treatment.