Media Criticism: Normalizing the Abnormal
No Surprises, but the Media Continues to Present Trump as Just Another President
It has been more than 10 years since Donald J. Trump rode the escalator down in Trump Tower to announce his first candidacy for the presidency, and the news media continues to struggle with how he should be covered.
The focus continues to be on the prerogatives of the office, often ignoring the extra-ordinary ways Trump bypasses norms and has remade everything around him.
His war on Iran and his bluster on Cuba are treated as normal, as if there are two sides to both when what we are really witnessing is a one-sided flexing of muscles.
The screenshot of NBC News above offers a glimpse: “Iran-U.S. diplomacy intensifies in push to break deadlock” tells us that both sides have dug in, even if only one side has acted as aggressor leading the other to act in response.
Dan Froomkin — his Press Watch should be required reading for journalism students and working journalists — makes a similar point about coverage of Trump’s slush fund and the overt corruption that forced it into existence — a lawsuit by a sitting president against the IRS, which is part of the executive branch and ultimately overseen by — yes — Trump. He basically sued himself and then negotiated a favorable deal to settle the suit.
The press, as Froomkin writes, has treated this as normal by accepting Trump’s description of the slush fund, normalizing it. This approach is tied to a false conception of neutrality — which assumes good faith on the part of all involved. The Republican Party has long used this to their advantage — see the run-up to the Iraq War — but whatever use it has continued to serve has broken under the weight of Trump’s deceits.
The reality is this: Nothing about what is happening is normal, not the way Trump acts as if there are no checks on his power, not the absolute sycophancy of his party, not the weakness of the Democrats, or the subservience of the press.
The news media has become an unwitting accomplice in all of this and needs to look closer at the way it functions. Our role has changed because the old roles and old rules do not work under fascism.