Ben Smith On Assessing Coronavirus Media Coverage

Trump Media — Are the media up to the challenge of Donald Trump?

Hannah Uebele is a producer for Under the Radar with Callie Crossley and previously worked as associate producer for Boston Public Radio. She graduated from Tufts University with a B.S. in English and Environmental Studies. She's a proud Delawarean but has found herself saying "wicked" more and more often, so the Bostonian metamorphosis is well underway.Contact: hannah_uebele@wgbh.org

April 27, 2020

Updated August 07, 2023

New York Times media columnist Ben Smith spoke to Boston Public Radio on Monday about media coverage during the coronavirus pandemic.

There have been debates among news outlets whether they should be broadcasting complete coverage of President Donald Trump's press conferences, Smith said.

"Should media outlets cover that press conference or should they ignore it? It's about proportionality, and I don't think it matters as much as people think it does," he said. "But the notion that the job of journalism is to just take the president live and broadcast him is crazy, and I don't think we should be doing that."

News outlets should be spending most of their resources covering things that are really happening in America, Smith noted.

"[Trump] wants it to be a story about him, and wants every story to be about him, but we don't really have to play along with that," he said. "These theatrical fights between Donald Trump and a bunch of television correspondents, that situation is not the real situation, the real situation is what's happening in the country, and I wish the cameras were out there more."