How Trump Wrecked Journalism In America

The emergence of Trumpism has split an already fractured landscape into entirely separate dimensions of reality where communication is now non-existent.

(photo: CNN)

by Ben Cohen

One of the greatest travesties of Donald Trump’s presidency is the terrifying effect it has had on the news media and journalism. Prior to Trump’s election, the news media in America was already in a dire state. For decades, Fox News and right wing radio spent billions of dollars walling off millions of conservatives from the rest of society, creating a fractured media landscape that made dialogue between left and right almost impossible.

The emergence of Trumpism however, has split that fractured landscape into entirely separate dimensions of reality where communication is non-existent.

The two sides are now engaged in a savage informational war that is ripping apart the fabric of civil society. The pro-Trump media doesn’t just reject what most of us would call reality, it presented a new one so bizarre and dangerous that it required cult-like levels of devotion just to watch it. Those opposed to it now spend most of their time trying to combat the relentless stream of vicious lies and propaganda and have little time to dedicate to anything else. The net result of this is a deeply dysfunctional fourth estate that can no longer effectively hold power to account.

How we got here

As Trump lied on an almost hourly basis about almost everything, the pro-Trump media made a collective editorial decision early on in his presidency that had truly horrifying ramifications: they chose to ignore his obvious lies, and then projected the reality based media’s criticism back at them.

When Trump said something demonstrably false and The New York Times reported it, Trump, Fox News and Breitbart simply claimed that the Times was “Fake News”. If the Washington Post quoted Trump verbatim from a public press conference, they were smearing him with vicious lies and propaganda. According to Breitbart for example, Trump explicitly did not suggest ingesting bleach to cure the Coronavirus. This despite him explicitly saying it on camera at his own press conference.

As Trump told his supporters previously, “Just remember: What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening."

This phenomenon has been particularly dangerous to casual observers of the news, those not familiar with the process behind ethical reporting and fact checking. Or in other words, the vast majority of the voting population. While the news literate have reacted with absolute horror at the Goebbelsian stream of propaganda emanating from the White House, the net effect on society has been to create an impression that there are two sides to every story, and “the media” is to blame for our divided country. Trump’s lies and insistence that the other side is lying has smashed the concept of truth into a million pieces, and Americans now no longer know what is true or who they can trust.

“The greatest threat to our democracy”

Speaking to The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg about his latest book, President Obama described the collapse of America’s media system as the “single biggest threat to our democracy.”

"I come out of this book very worried about the degree to which we do not have a common baseline of fact and a common story," Obama told Goldberg. "We don't have a Walter Cronkite describing the tragedy of Kennedy's assassination but also saying to supporters and detractors alike of the Vietnam War that this is not going the way the generals and the White House are telling us. Without this common narrative democracy becomes very tough."

Obama may well be downplaying the severity of the threat. Without a sane media system, it is very hard to see how a functioning democracy survives. With two entirely separate bubbles of reality, there is no basis for a conversation, no need to have one, and no way to effectively hold power to account.

During the Trump administration, the press uncovered extraordinary amounts of corruption, criminal activity and potentially treasonous behavior. Trump attempted to extort a foreign country into interfering with a U.S. election and barely bothered concealing it. Responsible media outlets covered it accurately and uncovered truly damning information, but the pro-Trump media simply refused to take it seriously. Half of the country believed it was a Democratic hit job, thus providing Republicans in the Senate enough cover to dismiss impeachment charges without much of a public backlash.

The choice

For responsible journalist, this all presents an incredibly depressing scenario. They now have to pick a side in order to maintain any credibility. By pretending it is a “both sides” issue and reporting on each as if they are comparable, they deny the asymmetrical nature of the ongoing war between the camps. Being objective in the Trump era means taking a side. One side is attached to reality, and the other is living in a bizarro nightmare where up is down, left is right, and Hydroxychloroquine is a legitimate Covid-19 treatment because Donald Trump said so.

Journalists and media companies have to make a choice about their own credibility, then run the risk of appearing to be hyper partisan by choosing to be a part of reality. But this is a straight forward choice for most responsible people. Fox News, Breitbart etc have declared all reality based media outlets socialist loving arms of the “Deep State” dedicated to bringing down Donald Trump. The objective of the reality based media then has to be based around countering their claims. Because without a common basis for reality, the public cannot ever make informed decisions about what is happening in their society.

The fact that journalists cannot really engage in regular reporting until this cancer on American society is destroyed is one of the worst aspects of this conflict. The right wing disinformation industry is all consuming — it pumps out relentless lies and conspiracy theories that undermine people’s ability to understand reality. Why bother reporting on global warming if half the population believes it is a liberal conspiracy spread to further Marxism and gender neutral bathrooms? Journalists have spent a truly insane amount of time debunking Trump’s lies and going after the right wing propaganda machine. That time could have been spent on other pressing issues facing our society.

Can the war be won?

It is unclear whether this is a winnable war. Trump has never responded to the media calling him out by tempering his message or walking back his spurious claims. Instead he always became more brazen and made even more ridiculous claims. And when the media tried to make nice, Trump took it as a sign he could say whatever he wanted without consequence.

One would hope that truth and reality ultimately prevail, but in a country infected with Trumpism, this is anything but certain. Trump might be leaving in January, but he still controls the Republican Party’s base and wields extraordinary power over the right wing media. Republican voters want more Trump, and the media machine will give them what they want. That means no end to the lies and conspiracy theories, and the rest of the media will have to devote enormous resources into combating them. There can be no compromise on this, and thus half of the country will regard the truth tellers as mortal enemies and the war will continue unabated.

It is a war worth winning though, and responsible media outlets must gear themselves up for another round of grueling conflict. The victory over Trump in the general election represents an important battle in this war, but the monster is not dead and there is still much work to be done.

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