Donald Trump has turned his focus to his newly self-declared campaign trail opponent: the media. On Twitter yesterday, Trump published a few incendiary messages letting the press know he feels his campaign has been given coverage that’s not only unfair, but dishonest. Trump’s criticisms come at a time when U.S. approval ratings of Congress and the media are hovering around 6%.
Writer Joanna Weiss (@JoannaWeiss), Managing News Editor at U.S. News and World Report, Lylah Alphonse (@WriteEditRepeat), and WGBH News contributor Dan Kennedy (@dankennedy_nu) joined Jim to discuss.
The panel discussed if coverage of Trump has shifted from earlier parts of the campaign, when he utilized the press as a publicity outlet. Lylah Alphonse (@WriteEditRepeat) argued the media is no longer only covering his message, and reporters are now “vetting him and he doesn’t like it.“
Dan Kennedy observed that attacks on the press have been a long-time tactic of Republic campaigns. Kennedy argued that unlike historical Republican campaigns against the media, Trump’s attacks don’t seem to be strategized. Kennedy said, “He just seems to be lashing out out of anger at how badly his campaign is going.” He added, “At a certain point, the media have to assert their own authority and report what they are observing in a fair and truthful manner.”
Joanna Weiss explained that the press is no longer just looking at Trump’s campaign stump speeches -- and have now moved on to the vetting process. Weiss took issue with imbalanced panel discussion representation that expects “one guy to represent all of Trump-dom, as opposed to...talking a little bit more to the actual voters.” Lylah Alphonse was struck by Trump’s tweets, “He didn’t rail against the liberal media, or the mainstream media, he railed against all the media.”
The panel discussed the job of the press to hold candidates accountable by fact-checking. Weiss said “A big frustration for journalists covering this campaign is that they do the fact checking… People are watch jogging this campaign as they do for all presidential campaigns.” Weiss argued that Trump will say a falsehood, and even after being fact-checked, he will continue to say it. Kennedy said, “If Hillary Clinton, had to run against a normal Republican… She’d be getting hammered all the time.”
The panel moved on to critique the media’s focus on polling in this year’s campaign coverage, over a discussion of issues. Dan Kennedy said that there’s no excuse for former reality T.V. star Trump working the press in the early months of the campaign. He said, “The one time that the media especially owes it to democracy to really focus on the issues is the primary season.”
