Why Journalists Fail at Covering Trump

They've been trained to operate in a rational world

Several days ago, I critized reporters and editors for “sanewashing” the incoherent and nasty stream of irrational nonsense that gushes forth almost daily from Donald Trump, summarizing his gibberish and lies as though they were sane policy proposals.

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Laura, a retiree with a theater background, was puzzled. “Why do educated, intelligent journalists do this? What is the motivation, the fear of offending their readership? Wanting to be mistakenly politically neutral?

In any event, she said, “It all keeps me frightened or angry, or both.”

Well, as they used to say back in the day, “if you aren’t outraged, you aren’t paying attention.” That’s perhaps more true now than ever.

But why can’t journalists get this right and communicate what’s really happening here?

Because they were trained for an earlier world, one in which there was an understood standard of rational behavior, especially by our highest leaders. Carl Bernstein, one of the two young reporters who broke the Watergate scandal, once said more seasoned reporters missed the story because they made a “presumption of regularity” about the men around the president, and the chief executive himself.

That meant they didn’t expect they would commit nutty illegal acts and then that the president himself would order an extremely clumsy coverup. But when it turned out they had indeed, everybody in even the president’s own party demanded he go.

Reporters are used to a world where Candidate Blue says his proposal created a million jobs and Candidate Red says it cost a million jobs. Reporters then investigate and publish the facts, which are then essentially accepted. They were not trained for one where the president makes up outrageous lies and insists they are true.

Nor can we cope with a world where the President calls his opponents outrageous names and spouts insults of the sort a nasty and mentally ill fifth grader might use.

So they cover him as though his behavior were normal. What’s most insidious about doing that is that after a time, it becomes accepted as normal, or at least acceptable.

The real problem, however, is that virtually the entire leadership of the Republican Party accepts, embraces or at least tolerates this, which makes it acceptable to the wider world of less engaged voters as well. This wasn’t always the case. Charles Sandman, a congressman from New Jersey, was Richard Nixon’s most pugnacious defender during the Watergate hearings. But when the “smoking gun” tape revealed that Nixon was directing an illegal coverup effort almost right from the start, he reportedly turned pale and immediately called for Nixon’s impeachment.

That should have happened with Trump long ago, and he should have been swiftly and unanimously convicted after the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Seven Republican senators did in fact vote to convict him, but 17 were needed.

The fact that he wasn’t removed then and was reelected later is the biggest crisis and threat to democracy and the rule of law that our nation has ever faced.

Journalism can’t cure this. But it could do a better and more consistent job of showing how outrageous and damaging Donald Trump’s behavior is.

But when it comes to saving our Constitution and ourselves, only WE can do that. And it’s way past time to start.