Why hasn’t the media learned its lesson about covering Donald … – WBUR News
Former president Donald Trump tried to overthrow an election he lost. Now, hes running for president again.
How should news organizations cover candidate Trump in post Jan. 6th America?
"We in the media dont get to decide who we cover," New York Timescolumnist David Brooks said. "Basically, the American people get to decide. And they get to decide by their votes and their preferences in polling."
But the media does get to decide how it covers candidates. And recently, CNN decided to give Trump a "town hall" with an audience of Trump friendly New Hampshire voters.
"It was a totally predictable disaster. We thought the media had learned a lesson just dont give him an open mic," PressWatch editor Dan Froomkin adds.
Today, On Point: Why the media still hasn't learned how to report on Donald Trump.
Dan Froomkin, editor of the media criticism website PressWatch.
Tim Lambert, special projects editor at WITF, the NPR affiliate in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: At CNN's supposed town hall with former President Donald Trump last week, Trump threw this old chestnut at moderator Kaitlan Collins.
TRUMP: Can I talk? Do you mind?
COLLINS: Yeah, whats the answer?
TRUMP: Do you mind?
COLLINS: I would like for you to answer the question.
TRUMP: Okay. Its very simple to answer.
COLLINS: Thats why I asked it.
TRUMP: It's very simple. ... Youre a nasty person, Ill tell ya. (CHEERING)
CHAKRABARTI: The bread and circuses rolled on, complete with Trump's most fervently held lie.
TRUMP: That was a rigged election, and it's a shame that we had to go through it. It's very bad for our country all over the world. They looked at it.
CHAKRABARTI: The 2020 election was not rigged. In fact, the legitimacy of the election was preserved most bravely by Republican election officials in several U.S. states. And if anyone watching wondered, does Trump possess even the tiniest drop of remorse for doing nothing, while his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021. While Trump declared with pride that, no, he does not.
TRUMP: They were there with love in their heart. That was it. Unbelievable. And it was a beautiful day.
CHAKRABARTI: Trump also declared that should he occupy the White House once again, one of his first acts would be to pardon the rioters, who, you will recall, stormed the Capitol shouting Kill Mike Pence and stalked congressional halls with zip ties and Confederate flags, hunting down members of Congress.
TRUMP: I am inclined to pardon many of them, I can't say for every single one, because a couple of them probably they got out of control. I will say it will be a large portion of them. You know, they did a very (APPLAUSE) and it will be very early on. (APPLAUSE)
CHAKRABARTI: The applause is telling. This was a live broadcast, not a true town hall, in the sense that folks of any political persuasion could attend. Rather, CNN packed the audience intentionally with Trump's New Hampshire supporters. They are cheering for the pardon of January 6th rioters, some of whom have been convicted by a jury of their peers of seditious conspiracy against the United States.
Donald Trump is once again a candidate for president of the United States. He is the leading Republican in the field. As such, he must be covered by the media. But the question is how to cover a serial liar who attempted to overthrow a legitimate U.S. election is a town hall. The way to do it? Well, here's CNN's Jake Tapper commenting on his own company's broadcast, right after it wrapped up.
JAKE TAPPER: Mr. Trump's first lie was told just seconds into the night with his false familiar claim that the 2020 election was, quote, a rigged election. And the falsehoods kept coming fast and furious about the January 6th insurrection, about the threat to Vice President Pence, about Pence's ability to overturn the election, about COVID, about the economy, and more.
CHAKRABARTI: As the criticism piled on, in comes Anderson Cooper riding to CNN's rescue the next day.
ANDERSON COOPER: The man you were so disturbed to see and hear from last night, that man is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for president. That man you were so upset to hear from last night, he may be president of the United States in less than two years now. Maybe you haven't been paying attention to him since he left office. And have you been enjoying not hearing from him, thinking it can't happen again? Some investigation is going to stop him.
Well, it hasn't so far. So, if last night showed anything, it showed it can happen again. It is happening again. He hasn't changed and he is running hard. You have every right to be outraged and angry. Never watch this network again. But do you think staying in your silo and only listening to people you agree with is going to make that person go away? If we all only listen to those we agree with, it may actually do the opposite.
CHAKRABARTI: Mr. Cooper, It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that you just lobbed a humdinger of a false dichotomy there. Please have some respect for your audience's intelligence. The question facing all of American media is not do you totally ignore Trump or give him a live stage before a friendly audience to flood the zone with lies. The fact that Cooper and CNN insist on framing things that way says a lot about political journalism in this country right now.
Do we not possess the intelligence and imagination to realize that there are many, many other ways to cover and report on this unique figure in American history? Yes, Trump is a man who pulled in 74 million votes in 2020. Biden got 81 million, by the way.
And yes, Donald Trump does not respect democracy, the democracy he once led and he wishes to lead again. Both things are true. So how should the news media approach a candidate like that? Well, Dan Froomkin is here to give us his thoughts on that really critical question. He is editor and the media of the media criticism website PressWatch. And he joins us from Washington. Dan, welcome to On Point.
DAN FROOMKIN: Thank you, Meghna. And I must say, you set that up very, very well indeed.
CHAKRABARTI: Well, you know, a lot of people, including you, saw this coming. ... In the weeks since the CNN town hall, in quotes, town hall happened, I mean, do you have any further explanation or insight into why CNN went forward with the format that it did?
FROOMKIN: Well, I think that there's no question that this was an intentional move by the new, relatively new CNN president, Chris Licht, to reach out to Trump, to reach out to Trump voters, to sort of ... check the box, to say that he's really trying to be neutral about politics. Which is a very, very unlikely place for anyone to be these days.
And it was a complete failure. It was a totally predictable failure. You know, he was just quoted recently saying that he thinks history will look kindly upon his decision to give Trump a stage on the town hall. I think that's only the case if history proves that that. From now on, no one will ever do anything like this again.
CHAKRABARTI: Well, I'm seeing reporting here on CNBC that they say sources are saying that Licht has now said that after rewatching the town hall, he says now that he would like to have done certain things differently from a production standpoint, that it was too focused on the spectacle of Trump, not on the substance of what he says.
FROOMKIN: Those are completely trivial additions on his part. The thing was fundamentally flawed in every conceivable way. I mean, and I should point out that I think with the exception of Anderson Cooper, I don't think there's anybody at CNN who thinks it was a good idea. You know, you don't show him live because he's a serial liar. Well, first of all, you don't treat him like a normal presidential candidate, especially, you know, the day after he was found liable for the sexual assault of E. Jean Caroll.
This person is a very unusual figure. He is a major newsmaker. He absolutely must be covered. But you can't. But if you just treat him like a normal presidential candidate, you're glossing over an enormous number of shocking scandals, just major assaults on his reputation that would kill anybody else. And you're just saying those don't matter.
What he is as a presidential candidate, we're going to treat him that way. Then they showed him live, which is a terrible mistake for when you have someone who's a serial liar, who fires out lies faster than most people talk. You don't give him an audience, and you certainly will give him an audience full of his own supporters.
Which CNN apparently agreed very happily to do. And you don't have only one person trying to be the moderator and the fact checker at the same time. So those were all incredibly obvious, predictable problems with this town hall.
CHAKRABARTI: ... To the surprise of nobody. So a little bit later, we're going to talk about ... the alternatives to all the things that CNN did. Yes. Just quickly, though, Dan, I mean, you've said that Chris Licht should resign.
FROOMKIN: Yeah. I mean, I think that while he was probably doing exactly what his bosses wanted him to do, I can't help but think he has completely lost the confidence of the CNN staff. I think that he has taken the brand in a very dangerous direction. I mean, and the notion that the middle, that neutrality is a place to occupy is actually kind of hilarious.
And it's not just him. I mean, a lot of the major news organizations are trying to do the same thing. But there's nobody in the middle. You can say either you're on the left or the right. Or I would put it either you're based in reality or you're not. But there's nobody who's like sort of half in reality, half not. And that's certainly not a good position for a news organization to be in. So I think what he's done to CNN is just not sustainable on any level.
CHAKRABARTI: Well, I think you're right about the edict coming from his bosses. Because CNN and its owners have pretty much declared that they strenuously want to not seem partisan in this election. So let's just play a moment here. This is David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery, which now owns CNN.
And a couple of weeks ago, he was on CNBC's Squawk Box and he was asked about the town hall, which at that point of time was then coming up and you're going to hear Zaslav first and then CNBC is Joe Kernen and Andrew Ross Sorkin.
DAVID ZASLAV: He should be. We need to hear both voices. That's what you see. Republicans are on the air on CNN. Democrats are on CNN. All voices should be heard on CNN.
JOE KERNEN: David, suddenly MSNBC is a real force to be reckoned with some of the problems that Fox has had. Is CNN going to fill a vacuum?
ZASLAV: There are a number of advocacy networks out there. Our focus is to be a network about the facts, the best version of the facts, as Carl Bernstein would say, great journalism and not just politics either. But when we do politics, we need to represent both sides. I think it's important for America.
ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: So I think it's a very admirable goal for America. The question to me is a slightly different one, does it rate? And maybe that's an unfair and terrible question to ask, but underneath it is the business question.
ZASLAV: Well, look, we got a great political season coming. This is a new CNN.
KERNEN: Great for who? (LAUGHS) For the country?
ZASLAV: In terms of the amount of news that will be coming
KERNEN: I know, I know. Some people dont like the choice. Some people don't like the choice... (CROSSTALK)
CHAKRABARTI: Dan Froomkin, what do you hear in that exchange?
FROOMKIN: Well, you hear a lot of the same false dichotomy that you pointed out in what Anderson Cooper said. Of course, you need to hear both sides. Both voices. I mean, that's absolutely true. And I think he's absolutely right to say so and to emphasize it.
There shouldn't be any censoring of one voice, especially if it's the leading candidate of the major party. And they shouldn't be partisan. And by partisan, I mean, holding a view that precludes you from seeing facts that you don't agree with. But advocacy. That's a tough one. Do you advocate for the facts? I'm for that.
CHAKRABARTI: Andrew Sullivan, you know, the commentator, he's commented that he thinks CNN actually did America a favor by showing, in his mind, that Trump is still the primary threat to American democracy. Jack Shafer over at Politico in an article headlined 'Enough with the bellyaching about CNN's Trump Town Hall.'
Shafer wrote, "The job of journalism is to confront the world and its actors as they are. Not shrink away from them in fright because covering them might benefit them." And here is David Brooks, New York Times columnist, and he was recently on PBS NewsHour.
DAVID BROOKS: We in the media don't get decide who we cover. Basically, the American people get to decide, and they get to decide by their votes and their preferences and polling. And so we cover major figures. Now, there's ways to cover in ways not to cover.
But in my view, it would be disastrous if we appointed ourselves the censors or the determiner of who gets covered in this country. And one of the reasons Donald Trump is popular, because people think people in our business are arrogant. And to me, that would be an arrogant move to say, no, we're just not going to cover that guy.
CHAKRABARTI: So, Dan, it wasn't just Anderson Cooper. I mean, a lot of people are sort of retreating back to this false dichotomy. What does that say more broadly about political journalism in the United States right now?
FROOMKIN: I don't think it's a lot of people. I think it's a handful. And I would call those three people in particular. You know, forgive me, but really, really pathetic, mewling defenders of a political journalism practice that has gone deeply awry. I don't think that they represent a lot of journalists. I don't think they represent a lot of young and diverse journalists who are really feeling like there's got to be a different way to do political reporting than what we're doing right now.
CHAKRABARTI: ... Point taken. I stand corrected. But these few people have pretty big platforms.
FROOMKIN: Yeah. No, no. And the people who are committing political journalism as it stands right now have enormous platforms. I don't think there's any question. But the fact is that if you want to address Trump in a way that I think is journalistically defensible, you don't do it the way CNN [did] it. There are ways to do it, though.
CHAKRABARTI: But do you think that a lot of, let's just call it inside the Beltway political journalists, are they still sort of confined to the old habits of journalism that would sort of require treating Trump like a normal candidate?
FROOMKIN: It's a lot easier to go, hey, here's Trump and then quote him than it is to actually contextualize what's going on. ... They have very old habits, which used to work, which worked back when you had two political parties that were roughly in symmetry in terms of, you know, their basis in reality and their acknowledgment of certain things. And for instance, that the government can actually do good. And then, you know, they had very, very different views.
But when you had that sort of a symmetrical situation, you could do good journalism by saying, here's what these people say, and here's what these people say. But now that things are so asymmetrical, and certainly between the parties, but especially between anybody and Trump, you can't just do that. You can't just go, hey, look, listen to him. And he certainly can say, hey, listen to him when he's being cheered on by a bunch of wackos. Excuse me.
CHAKRABARTI: Well, you know, I'm going to keep my focus on the media companies here. But I also see, you know, like a certain set of very important incentives for the corporate media, corporate political media that have not changed. And in a sense, that CNBC clip sort of hinted at it. When the head of Discovery Warner, was asked, you know, does it rate? And so, you know, here is a blast from the past. This is 2016.
Now, former CBS chairman Les Moonves was talking about then Trump's presidential bid and how it was good for his network's finances. He was at the Morgan Stanley Technology Media and Telecom Conference in February of 2016.
LES MOONVES: Who would have thought that this circus would come to town? But, you know, it may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS. (LAUGHTER) And that's all I got to say.
CHAKRABARTI: It doesn't seem like that much has changed, Dan, because I just quoted Chris Licht in him saying, well, you know, after rewatching it again, I might have changed a little thing or to hear about the production of it. So, I mean are the incentives for ratings and clicks and profit, still the driving ones?
FROOMKIN: Yes, to a large degree. I mean, Trump sells, there's no question. I mean, Trump is a magnet for eyeballs on the Internet. And on television, people can't take their eyes off him. It's, you know, the train wreck situation now. But he is, I mean, it's not a coincidence that this man's background was in reality TV.
He is an extremely, extremely gifted man when it comes to capturing the camera's attention. You know, the New York Times TV critic James Poniewozik wrote a fabulous book just about his relationship with the media and how compelling a subject he is. So it's not just pure profit motives. It's also, it's hard to take your eyes off that guy sometimes.
CHAKRABARTI: You listed specifically what should political journalism not do in covering Trump again? So let's talk about what you think the practices might be. I mean, first of all, it's not really possible, I would say, in real time to keep up with the amount of lies.
FROOMKIN: That is an essential point.
CHAKRABARTI: So what to do with that situation.
FROOMKIN: Well, obviously, I have some thoughts about that. I mean, first of all, I should say there is no really successful way to interview him. There will never be a Perry Mason moment in an interview with Donald Trump. So what you need to do is ... he needs to be firmly and seriously confronted with the facts that he denies and asked to explain why he denies them.
We need to ask him questions about not just what he feels about something, but what was going through his head when certain things happened. So, for instance, one question before the debate that I thought would be good was, What was on your mind that day as you refused requests from your staff to tell the capital rioters to go home? Were you happy? Were you sad? I mean, that's a question that goes to his state of mind, which I think is really important. What were you doing for more than 3 hours that afternoon instead of telling rioters to leave the Capitol?
CHAKRABARTI: Because, on that point, there was a moment where CNN's moderator Kaitlan Collins, may have gotten close to the kind of question you're talking about. Because she asked him, and we've got the tape here, why Trump took 3 hours on January 6th to issue any sort of public reaction as rioters breached the U.S. Capitol.
COLLINS: When they went to the capitol and they were breaking into the capitol, smashing windows, injuring police officers, why did it take you three hours to tell them to go home?
TRUMP: I dont believe it did.
CHAKRABARTI: So I mean, she asked the question. And Trump just lies and says, I don't believe it did, where in fact it did. So what good did asking that kind of question do?
FROOMKIN: Well, it was a good question. And Kaitlan Collins asked some very good questions and even did some follow up. But the format did not allow her to say stop, to slow things down and say, okay, wait a minute. Yes, you did spend 3 hours there. Let me read you this. Let me show you this. Let me put this up on the screen. You know, let me quote the testimony from 16 different people. You got to slow things down with Trump.
She also did a good job of pointing out when he didn't answer the question, but then she didn't have the time to say, okay, now answer the question. She did go back several times on it, basically giving him the chance to admit that he lost the election. But again, there's not going to be a Perry Mason moment. He's not going to do that. ... The essential fact here is to get him out of the bubble where he can say anything he wants and people just move right on.
So, if I were advising somebody on how to interview Trump, I would say, first of all, you can't agree to a strict time limit, because then he'll filibuster. And then you sit down without an audience in dead silence, and when he says something that is bogus, you stop him right there.
And you ask him why he's saying that. Does he really believe it or is he delusional? You know, you confront him with facts, and you have maybe three people whispering facts into your ear. Because it's not enough just to have one person fact checking all the time. Nobody could possibly do that. There's a reason why, you know, Harold Hill, the music man, talks so fast.
CHAKRABARTI: Well, in a sense, what you're describing, we have seen a couple times in the past, right. I mean, Chris Wallace did an interview like this, Jonathan Swan, a couple of others. And it did yield a different kind of experience of watching Trump and learning how he thinks. But I mean, there's still the access game always in Washington. I mean, the networks and cable channels take the risk that Trump is just never going to agree to such interviews this time around. Are they willing to take that risk?
FROOMKIN: Absolutely. No. And so far, what we're hearing, the result from the town hall, not everybody saying, let's not do that. It's, we would like to do it, too. I mean, my sense is he's getting, you know, requests from everybody right now and they will exceed his demand. In fact, this brand new, very bizarre clickbait startup called The Messenger, which launched a couple of days ago.
They got a 30-minute interview with Trump. And I don't know whether they agreed to it or not, but it was a complete softball interview. It was absolutely pathetic. And that was a sit-down interview, not live. So they had lots of advantages there, but they were desperately trying to make news in 30 minutes. So they kept on just peppering him with silly questions.
CHAKRABARTI: Well, so you talked about having ... a whole staff of fact checkers whispering into the interviewer's ear. First of all, I'm going to argue that I still don't think corporate media is built to do that kind of thing. But haven't you also had a critique of just the entire notion of fact checking around Trump?
FROOMKIN: Well, yes and no. I think that simply doing a fact check three days later, you know, that you bury somewhere, saying, oh, gosh, he was wrong about this. I think that is anachronistic and silly. I think fact checking in the moment, as in correcting the record in the moment, is essential. And in fact, I feel like A, the fact check should be immediate and in the main story.
And B, sometimes the story should be about the lying. Not about what he said, but the fact that he's lying when he says this. And why is he lying? The 'why' behind the lie is something that fact checks never gets to. ... But that's essential. So the lead article ought to be he went on TV, he lied about this. Here's why he's lying about this.
CHAKRABARTI: Even if in the moment, the fact checking, the real time fact checking on Trump produces a kind of conflict that Trump thrives on? Because the sort of name calling and parrying and the theatrics of that is, I mean, Trump is excellent at that. And people love seeing that. So take that risk even if he could actually potentially benefit from it.
FROOMKIN: No, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, at the end of the day, I'm very pessimistic that any of this will actually happen and that it would work. But, you know, a guy can dream.
CHAKRABARTI: Obviously, I'm here hosting this show also as a member of the media, though I'm not a beltway political reporter. So do you mind if I take advantage of your profession as being a media critic and ask you to sort of turn your lens on us for a couple of minutes here? Okay. Because we are going to do a lot of political coverage here. So first of all, how would you describe, you know, public radio in general? Briefly. And its political coverage thus far.
FROOMKIN: I think it's sometimes terrific and sometimes so terrified that it doesn't state the obvious because it's afraid of being called liberal. I think that, you know, because of the inaccurate perception that it's government funded, it's particularly sensitive to accusations of being partisan.
And what it hasn't done, unfortunately, is say, look, we're not partisan, we're not for one party or another, but we do support the truth and we're going to sometimes be calling it out. And at this point, things are kind of asymmetrical and we're sorry, but that's not our problem.
CHAKRABARTI: Well, what I want to do is walk you through sort of a list of ideas that would describe my approach in this election cycle. And I want you to give me your responses to it, you know, quickly, because I got a bullet point list here. Don't pull your punches, Dan. Seriously because we have to be honest about ourselves here. So first of all, I approached this election cycle with the assertion that no living journalist or American has really experienced a moment or figure like Donald Trump in, you know, Trump version 2023. Is that fair to say?
FROOMKIN: Absolutely.
CHAKRABARTI: Okay. So, then I look at the last election and Trump's first administration, and I say between 2016 and 2020, there was an argument, a strong argument to be made that when you're talking about policies of the Trump administration, a traditional form of journalism was warranted. Looking at what he did, looking at different sides of, you know, policy battles, etc. Fair enough for the past?
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Why hasn't the media learned its lesson about covering Donald ... - WBUR News