What should the media do with President Trump’s false election claims?
President Donald Trump gives two thumbs up to supporters as he departs after playing golf on Sunday. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
For the past six months, the country has been on edge as we led up to the 2020 election. But even now, as the election is essentially over, the country cannot totally exhale.
We have 72 days between now and inauguration day when Joe Biden is expected to be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. Buckle up because this ride will be bumpy.
There’s no indication that the transition of power will go smoothly over the next two months. President Donald Trump has taken a defiant tone, showing no signs of conceding while ramping up his insistence that the election has been rigged. We expect to see recounts and lawsuits, which are acceptable in our democracy. We also expect to see plenty of baseless rhetoric and unproven conspiracy theories, which are not acceptable.
So what role does the media play in how the next two months will go?
In her latest piece, Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan wrote of Trump: “He was a deeply abnormal president, but we constantly sought to normalize him, treating his deranged tweets like legitimate news and piously forecasting, every time he sounded the least bit calm, that he was becoming ‘presidential.’”
She added, “From the beginning, TV news far too often took his public rallies and speeches as live feeds, letting his misinformation pollute the ecosystem.”
There is a danger of that happening again. Based on how he has reacted so far, Trump seems likely to continue floating his false theories, putting the media in an uncomfortable position.
Up until now, most news outlets have tried to walk a tightrope — reporting on the president’s protestations about the election, while attempting to point out that Trump’s assertions are not rooted in fact or reality.
News broadcasters sound something like this: “The president says the election is rigged. There is no proof that is true.” We’ve heard versions of this on all networks for the past three days.
But is that enough? Doesn’t there come a point when repeating the president’s unproven claims, even while debunking those claims, does damage? Doesn’t putting Trump’s bogus allegations into the ether chip away at the trust in our elections even though there is no reason to doubt the honesty of our elections?
On one hand, Trump is the president. What he says and what he does right now is news, especially if his refusal to participate in a transition of power impacts the nation. On the other hand, just because Trump insists the election is a fraud doesn’t make it so — and it doesn’t make it news. As The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg told Brian Stelter on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” “The salience of this administration goes down by the day.”
But it is not going to disintegrate completely.
News outlets have to think long and hard about what truly is news at this point. It looks as if it will be impossible to completely ignore everything the president says about the election. When the media is forced to cover this part of the story, it must keep repeating that his conspiracies are not true. But the media also doesn’t have to cover Trump’s dangerous speech every time he tweets or talks.
Trump has made his allegations known. The media has reported on that. For the media to keep reporting on it every single time Trump repeats it is no longer necessary.
If something changes — if Trump concedes, or Trump offers something more than just wild, off-the-cuff lies — then report it. Otherwise, ignore it and cover real news. Goodness knows there’s plenty of it with coronavirus, the economy and so much more.
Wallace’s strong words
Fox News’ Chris Wallace. (Courtesy: Fox News)
Fox News’ Chris Wallace had a couple of moments over the weekend that need to be pointed out.
First, on Saturday, after Biden was projected the winner of the 2020 election, Wallace commented on Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the election.
“I think it’s going to become increasingly untenable,” Wallace said on the air. “It’s one thing to be pursuing legal challenges. It’s another to have this very heightened rhetoric that we know is the way the president does business. I think it’s going to become increasingly untenable because I think you’re going to start to see a lot of the Republican leaders who are realizing their fortunes and their futures are no longer so directly tied to Donald Trump are going to begin to pull back.”
Wallace also pointed out how “un-normal” Trump’s refusal to accept Biden’s victory is.
Then on his “Fox News Sunday” show, Wallace again brought up the idea that Republicans will have to push back on Trump’s election claims.
“It would seem to me that Republicans on Capitol Hill have a role to play in this,” Wallace said. “A very few of them have said, look, you pursue your legal options, but, you know, damn down the rhetoric, like Mitt Romney, like Pat Toomey.”
Then he said this whopper: “There are a lot who are just silent. And then there are some — I mentioned Ted Cruz — you know who are like the Japanese soldiers who come out 30 years after the war — out of the jungle — and say, ‘Is the fight still going on?’”
Powerful comments
Here’s how NBC News’ Lester Holt closed his “Nightly News” broadcast on Saturday, the day Biden was projected to win the election:
“The handwriting has been on the wall for days. Today, it was on the screen in bold letters and a check mark and for the first time it could be said out loud: America has decided to go another way. This kind of passion — the deep disappointment of the president’s supporters, the celebratory dances of Joe Biden voters — should be allowed their moment. As a country the campaign whipped us into a frenzy, too often rooted in fear of the other. Today, we let it out. Both sides deserve a collective primal scream over all we’ve been through.
“But tomorrow, just maybe we can leave it on the field, wave away the smoke screens and confront what we know to be real and urgent — a pandemic that is literally killing us and sending too many into financial ruin. If we can reengage unity on anything, let it be in the insistence that our leaders, both incoming and outgoing, put us and our well being first.”
How did the media do?
In case you missed it, I had a special edition of my Poynter Report newsletter on Saturday, applauding how the media handled Election Day turned Election Week. If you missed it, you can check it out here.
The ratings game
CNN was the big winner on what turned out to be the final day of the election. From 3 a.m. Saturday morning until 3 a.m. Sunday morning, CNN was the most-watched cable news network. It drew 4.2 million viewers, which was more than MSNBC (3.01 million) and Fox News (1.72 million). Interesting to note that Fox News was the most-watched network of all on Tuesday’s Election Day, but then CNN mostly took over from there.
Making the call
CNN’s Brian Stelter compiled exactly when the networks made the calls on Saturday to project that Joe Biden would be the next president.
CNN was the first at 11:24:20 a.m. NBC was next at 11:25:15, followed by CBS at 11:25:45, and The Associated Press and ABC at 11:26. Fox News made its call at 11:40 a.m.
|
