After Tuesday’s election, I got an email request from The Poynter Institute’s media columnist Tom Jones. He asked if I could answer two questions he had about media coverage, Donald Trump and the election for a collection of responses he published today.
My responses, as sent to him, are below:
What role did the press have (or not have) in the 2024 election results? Were Trump and Harris covered accurately?
I know there are a lot of people who will quibble with how mainstream news outlets covered Harris and Trump, alleging a double standard. I do think traditional news media have always struggled with covering Trump’s dysfunction and how to be honest about his extremism while remaining fair. I also think there was plenty of reporting across loads of news outlets to give the public a clear notion of who he is. But there is an increasingly powerful alterative news structure, with Fox News at the center, dedicated to explaining away most criticism of Trump, overly criticizing his political enemies and supporting conservative causes. I sat on a journalism panel last year and said the biggest challenge mainstream media hasn’t faced, is that there are millions of Americans who do not believe what we report, even when we get it right. And now, I’m afraid that dynamic has affected a presidential election in ways we are only now beginning to process.
Where do we go from here? What will the next four years under the second Trump presidency look like?
I think fearless, independent journalism is at serious risk now. When the owner of the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, issues a complimentary congratulatory text to Trump not long after his newspaper lost over 200,000 subscriptions from his action to kill a Harris endorsement, consumers are left wondering which news outlets they can trust. And journalists are wondering how Trump, who talked often about seeking revenge against news outlets he felt had wronged him, will respond to incisive coverage. The bubble of conservative-oriented media has distorted what many people even believe is fair news coverage and increased the amount of misinformation and disinformation in the public space. But I think one of the biggest problems facing mainstream news outlets now is the belief among non-conservative consumers that coverage of this election cycle let them down by “sanewashing” and normalizing Trump’s excesses. Traditional journalists who have already lost the confidence of conservative consumers are now facing diminishing trust from the news consumers who are left, which is not a great combination.