New York tabloid coverage of Donald Trump
Donald Trump is being arraigned today on numerous criminal charges at the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan. Thus far, much of the news media coverage of this process has focused on what Trump is saying and doing, e.g. his reaction to his indictment, his travel plans, and his plan to fly back from New York to Florida later today to give a speech, no doubt full of whining and complaining about being subject to the legal system. But today is really about what is being done to Trump, and what he faces, i.e. hopefully some modicum of justice. It’s also a teachable moment for many Americans, to find out this country was founded upon the principle that no one is above the law.
Therefore, the news media have a choice today: will they correctly focus on what is happening to Trump, including booking, fingerprinting, reading of the charges against him, analysis of the legal process going forward, the potential for prison time, etc.? Or will the media continue to base their coverage on Trump’s own statements and travels? In particular, will the news media fully cover the rather meaningless Republican circus of Trump’s Florida speech tonight, letting him once again set the agenda? If so, then we will know that the media will cover the 2024 presidential elections, like the 2020 elections, in the most superficial and damaging way.
Donald Trump, perhaps more than anyone else in history, knows how to get media attention and use that attention to further his interests. Going back to the 1980s, those interests were largely business-related. They were obviously ego-related as well, but that is best left for another column. Suffice it to say that Trump seemed to relish the media coverage he received first in New York, then nationally and internationally. He affixed his name (changed some time earlier from the much more German-sounding Drumpf) to buildings, hotels, airplanes and the Central Park skating rink. His personal and professional lives — including high-profile affairs and divorces — were inextricably intertwined, and splashed on front pages of tabloids like the New York Daily News and New York Post.
Then Trump turned his media experience to the political arena. He had previously dipped his toe into the political waters by taking out full page ads in the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Boston Globe in 1987, calling on Japan and others to pay the U.S. for protecting their purchased oil being transported in the Persian Gulf. It was a centrist type of opinion, not especially controversial, and tinged with nationalism (usually associated with Republicans) while critical of the Republican administration of President Ronald Reagan. Two years later, however, Trump’s politics demonstrated a more racist and fascist side, as he took out newspaper front page ads again, this time calling for the death penalty in New York State, especially for the five black and Latino teens convicted of the assault and rape of a jogger in Central Park. Evidence later exonerated all five men in 2002, but they might not have been alive to be freed if Trump had gotten his way.
Later, Trump decided to use his media skills to run for president. By more than one account, he never dreamed of winning. More likely, his calculation was that the added media attention would contribute to his business profits. But in one of the most embarrassing chapters of news coverage in our history, the U.S. news media turned tabloid, giving Trump more attention and airtime — incongruously known as “earned media” but meaning free advertising — than perhaps anyone else had ever gotten. That kind of media attention, consisting largely of mere stenography of Trump’s statements, rallies and antics, continued throughout the 2016 presidential primary and general election season (greatly helping Trump win) and during Trump’s four years in the White House, even as Trump and his White House underlings bashed and canceled some of the very reporters covering him. Today’s banal, superficial and beaten-down state of our news media, including print, digital, cable TV “news” channels and others, owes a lot to Donald Trump.
The fear, however, is that the media still want to cover Trump the same way that they did before, because what he says and does “makes for great copy,” which translates to higher ratings, higher readership, and more money. Who wants to cover boring, competent Democratic officeholders like President Joe Biden, who does the mundane work of signing bills, touting infrastructure projects and nominating federal judges, when journalists can report the outrageous antics of Trump and other Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who love the spotlight and know just what to feed the media beast?
Again, therefore, the question is, what happens now that Trump is beginning to face legal consequences for his many alleged crimes? There are other investigations of Trump that are ongoing, some of which, for example, in Georgia, where Trump was caught on a phone call begging state officials to “find votes” for him after he had lost the election there, could lead to more indictments. Will America’s news media, which are supposed to be a “fourth estate” that shines the light on our government and helps preserve our democracy, instead send our democracy further into the tank? We’ll have some real clues to that question just hours from now.
Photo by The Real Blythequake, used under Creative Commons license. https://is.gd/fW5k4D
