Thread: It’s Time for the TV Networks to Challenge Trump

December 8, 2015
It’s Time for the TV Networks to Challenge Trump
By John Cassidy

With Donald Trump busy taking his Presidential campaign into areas previously reserved for right-wing extremist groups, other Republicans are being forced to respond to the presence of a wily hatemonger in their midst. At least on this occasion, the reaction has been less baleful than some might have expected. Within hours of Trump issuing his call, on Monday, for a complete ban on Muslims entering the United States, many of the other G.O.P. candidates had criticized him. Chris Christie called Trump’s proposal “ridiculous.” Jeb Bush labelled him “unhinged.” Marco Rubio said, “His habit of making offensive and outlandish statements will not bring Americans together.”

On Tuesday morning, Paul Ryan, the new Speaker of the House of Representatives, went considerably further. “Normally I do not comment on what’s going on in the Presidential election. I will take an exception today,” Ryan told reporters. “This is not conservatism. What was proposed yesterday is not what this party stands for. And more importantly, it’s not what this country stands for. Not only are there many Muslims serving in our armed forces, dying for this country, there are Muslims serving right here in the House, working every day to uphold and to defend the Constitution.”

Coming from arguably the most senior elected Republican in the country, Ryan’s words were powerful, welcome, and overdue. For too long, many elements of the G.O.P., fearful of alienating Trump’s supporters, have been enabling the bloviating billionaire. But at least the Republican Party establishment is finally wrestling with its Trump problem. Can the same be said for the media, particularly the television media, which, unwittingly or not, have often acted as an arm of Trump’s public-relations apparatus?

For months now, Trump has been virtually ever-present on cable-news networks and broadcast-network political shows. Indeed, it is probably safe to assume that no Presidential candidate in U.S. history has received as much free air time as Trump has. Often, he has nothing new to say. And unlike virtually everybody else, he doesn’t even have to turn up in the studio to be interviewed. If his schedule doesn’t permit it, or he can’t be bothered to schlep around midtown Manhattan, the producers of many shows, including some of the flagship Sunday-morning programs, allow him to call in by telephone.

On Tuesday morning, he was at it again. During ABC’s “Good Morning America,” CNN’s “New Day,” and MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Trump blithely defended, via telephone, his proposed travel ban on Muslims, which, according to one of his staff members, would even apply to members of the U.S. armed forces serving overseas. Rather than explaining how such a ban accorded with the religious freedoms guaranteed under the Constitution, or how it would be enforced (most passports don’t list a person’s religion), Trump sought to wrap himself in the mantle of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who, during the Second World War, authorized the detention of German, Italian, and Japanese people.

Without much success, the shows’ hosts did try to challenge Trump. After a fruitless back and forth on “Morning Joe,” Joe Scarborough eventually shut down one of Trump’s soliloquies by going to a commercial break. It was largely a symbolic gesture, however. Once the break finished, Trump was back again, taking questions from some of the show’s other hosts.

The segment brought to mind a similar exchange on NBC’s “Meet the Press” a couple of weeks ago. To his credit, after Trump called in, Chuck Todd, the show’s host, repeatedly challenged some claims his guest had recently made—that the Obama Administration was planning to let in a quarter of a million Syrian refugees, and that Trump had seen footage of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11. “You’re running for President of the United States,” Todd said at one point. “Truthfulness matters.” Trump, as he always does, blustered his way through. Then, at the end of the interview, Todd said that he hoped Trump would agree to come into the studio for a sit-down interview.

In a huge country like the United States, it is hard to exaggerate how much television counts during national political campaigns. And it isn’t just personal appearances that matter: it is how much overall attention each candidate (and his or her proposals) receives. In a post at the Washington Post’s Wonkblog on Tuesday, Jim Tankersley pointed to data gathered by the GDELT Project, a big Internet database, which shows Trump way out in front of everybody else in terms of mentions on cable-news networks and a selection of local stations. A few weeks before Thanksgiving, Trump’s advantage temporarily disappeared, as the media shifted to consider the Democratic debates. Since then, though, as Trump’s Islamophobic rhetoric has become increasingly shrill, he has once again dominated the small screen.

“It’s overly simplified to say all this exposure has put Trump atop the Republican polls,” Tankersley wrote. “Jeb Bush has also been on television a lot, and he’s languishing in low single digits. But it’s a clear economic advantage for a candidate to get free air time, saving his or her campaign the expense of buying TV ads. Since he entered the race, Trump has pressed that advantage tremendously, and the networks have gone along with it.” I’d go further than that. I’d say that Trump, from his early dust-up with Fox’s Megyn Kelly onward, has been playing the networks like a fiddle. And until now, the networks have generally been happy to be played.

To some extent, their eagerness to showcase Trump is defensible. His campaign merits a lot of coverage. He is way ahead in the G.O.P. polls, and he has been leading for months. I write about him often; so do many other print journalists. But let’s not kid ourselves: commercial factors are also at play. The networks are competing against each other. A Trump interview generates ratings, and ratings generate advertising dollars.

That gives Trump great leverage. When he wants some publicity for his latest wheeze, he can usually have his pick of broadcast venues. When he threatens to boycott a particular show, or even an entire network, as he has done on several occasions, it is a consequential matter for the folks running the networks. Often, they buckle to his demands.

So, what can be done?

Many journalists would say nothing at all. Freedom of the press in an inviolable principle: networks, individual shows, and other news organizations must be at liberty to feature whomever they choose. And news is news. It is the press’s job to report it, not to censor it in accordance with its own views. If a politician in the news says offensive things, it is up to the American public to reject him—not the panjandrums of the media.

These seem like powerful arguments. They hardly represent the final word, though. When I attended the Columbia School of Journalism thirty years ago, I was struck by how seriously American journalists took the idea of serving the public interest. Coming from Britain, the home of Fleet Street, I found the notion a bit quaint. Over the years, I have tempered my skepticism (somewhat), and have developed more appreciation for the American ethos.

Is it in the public interest for a calculating demagogue like Trump to be granted such a large and powerful platform, on which to present his increasingly alarmist world view? Is there a way, short of deliberately restricting his television appearances, to insure that he doesn’t have it his own way? To insure that journalistic organizations, rather than simply interviewing him or hanging out with him on the campaign trail and passing along his public statements, do substantive stories pointing out the dangers, weaknesses, and inconsistencies of what he is proposing?

I don’t have ready answers to these questions: I’m not sure anyone does. But it would be reassuring if there were more evidence that senior people in journalism, particularly at the TV networks, were grappling with them. As Trump has maneuvered his way to his current position, the G.O.P. isn’t the only prominent American institution that has been in denial about its role in enabling him.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-c...e-to-the-media

Every TV network and newspaper has been "challenging" Trump since the day he announced. You all cover Trump because he is the news. If he weren't, you wouldn't be covering him. Trump makes the news by addressing policy issues within the United States. He makes the news because his subject matter is very important to the American People, from immigration to trade to taxes to yes terrorism and national security.

For any writer to suggest that journalists and TV networks should somehow come up with a plan not to cover Trump would be a plan not to cover the news which would be the equivalent of a conspiracy not to cover the issues important to the American People in a US Presidential Election.

What kind of journalism would that be?

Shame on you, John Cassidy. That doesn't sound very American to me. Wait ... are you an American?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C...8journalist%29

Oh! No, you're not! You're a relocated Brit! Shame on you! I can spot your scum brand a mile away.

Question: Why isn't our Free Press hiring American writers? Is there a news media conspiracy to use foreign immigration to change US opinion to somehow transform the United States into something we don't want to be?

Heritage Alert! Check the bios of writers and pundits so you know whether or not the writers and journalists are American or Something Else.

I think this could well be the intelligence gap between our media pundits and the polls. Many of the pundits aren't from our country, they're immigrants working here in the news media influencing opinions from an external international globalist perspective. That's why they hate Trump, a real live natural born citizen with fearless unwavering loyalty to the United States and the American People. He can't be persuaded to change, he refuses to relent to their schemes and scams, and he's also smarter than they are to boot, so they walk right into his Stupid Trap which is not only killing their agenda, it's killing their egos.