Harvard lessons for anti-Trump media

With their steady stream of “incorrect” reportage, journalists have afforded Trump a legitimacy he otherwise won’t deserve.

The recent flurry of media lies on U.S. President Donald Trump has given a righteous edge to his war on journalists. His utter ignorance and uncouth behaviour had marked him out as a man not worthy of his position. But the relentless flow of manufactured stories against him in the media now gives a ring of truth to his outrageous depiction of American journalism just when he had taken over as the president—“Very fake news”.

Consider this: CNN wrongly reported a few days ago that WikiLeaks had informed Trump before releasing hacked documents during his presidential campaign, implying that Trump and WikiLeaks were in secret collusion. Trump was indeed informed by WikiLeaks, but a day after it had released the documents to the public. CNN had to correct the report.

Recently, ABC News had to suspend its reporter after a report wrongly claimed that Trump had told former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn to get in touch with Russian officials during his presidential campaign.
Yet another recent report in several media outlets wrongly claimed that Deutsche Bank had received a subpoena from the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, for Trump’s financial records.

Journalists and editors often make mistakes. They do get misled by sources too. But if they make a point of continuing to make mistakes and get misled by sources, few would doubt Trump when he says the media is after him. From here, it will not be a long distance when people also tend to believe another of his outrageous theory he postulated on Twitter: “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!”

What is the defence of persistently erring American media? We make mistakes and correct ourselves, but Trump never retracts his lies. As if media is in competition with politicians in truth-telling.

Few can contest that Trump has brought American presidency to a new low by his cavalier attitude. And it can be no one’s case that media should not go after politicians. Yet, with their steady stream of “incorrect” reportage, journalists have afforded Trump a legitimacy he would otherwise won’t deserve.

The fact is, a large part of media had made up its mind on Trump long before he got elected. How do you explain an opinion poll published by a leading media outlet a few days before the elections that gave Hillary Clinton 98.1% chance of winning the presidency? Can you go so wrong unless you are hellbent on going wrong?

In May, a report from Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy analyzed news coverage of President Trump’s first 100 days in office. It was based on an analysis of news reports in the print editions of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post, the main newscasts of CBS, CNN, Fox News, and NBC, and three European news outlets (the UK’s Financial Times and BBC, and Germany’s ARD).

“Trump had received unsparing coverage for most weeks of his presidency, without a single major topic where Trump’s coverage, on balance, was more positive than negative, setting a new standard for unfavorable press coverage of a president,” it said. The Harvard analysts warned the media thus: “A long-running battle in which Trump accuses the press of trafficking in fake news while journalists reply that their news is anything but fake would probably, fairly or not, weaken the public’s confidence in the press.” In just six months, American media is doing all it can to prove the Harvard analysts right.

A similar analysis by Pew Research Center in October found that most of the media coverage of Trump in his first 100 days as the president shifted away from a focus on ideology and agenda to leadership and character. In simpler terms, you can call it ad hominem disguised as journalism.
Below is what the report found:

“Compared with the first 60 days of the Clinton, Bush and Obama presidencies, news outlets’ evaluations of Trump’s start in office were far more negative and less positive. About six-in-ten news stories about Trump’s first 60 days (62%) carried an overall negative assessment of his words or actions. That is about three times more negative than for Obama (20%) and roughly twice that of Bush and Clinton (28% each).

The fact is, a large part of media had made up its mind on Trump long before he got elected. How do you explain an opinion poll published by a leading media outlet a few days before the elections that gave Hillary Clinton 98.1% chance of winning the presidency? Can you go so wrong unless you are hellbent on going wrong?

Coverage was also far less positive, with just 5% of stories conveying an overall positive assessment of the president and the administration. This is in sharp contrast to Obama’s first days in 2009, when 42% of the stories offered an overall positive assessment. While the difference is less pronounced, coverage of Bush’s and Clinton’s early days was still at least four times as positive as Trump’s (22% and 27%, respectively). During the first 100 days of the Trump presidency, five news topics accounted for fully 66% of all coverage studied across 24 different news outlets: political skills (17%), immigration (14%), presidential appointments and nominations (13%), U.S.-Russia relations (13%) and health care (9%).

These topics reflected the major events that occurred during the first 100 days of the Trump administration.
Stories of Trump’s political skills spanned a wide range of issues and events, such as the delivery of his first speech to a joint session of Congress, his management of White House staff, and his promotion and handling of claims about wiretapping.

In three of the five most common story topics, coverage focused overwhelmingly on the president’s leadership and character. Among the five most prominent topics covered by the news media during the first 100 days of the Trump administration, immigration was the only one to focus more on the president’s policy agenda and ideology than his leadership and character: 59% versus 41% of stories. Coverage of health care, the other domestic issue among these top five, was about split between the two frames.

The remaining three topics—Trump’s political skills, presidential appointments and nominations, and U.S.-Russia relations—were overwhelmingly framed around his leadership and character. For each of these topics, at least nine-in-ten stories mostly focused on elements of leadership and character rather than policy. For example, nearly every story about U.S.-Russia relations was framed around the president’s leadership and character (98%), not his policy agenda.”

What the Pew Research report says is even when it comes to policy and ideology, the media would rather go after the man! Some might say this kind of coverage is self-inflicted given Trump’s casual outbursts and colourful life. But isn’t it for the media to avoid giving the man a larger play and spend more time analysing his policy instead?

The fact is if Trump is relishing his war on media, the media too enjoys wrestling with him in the mud. Consider a recent story by the The New York Times that breaks the news that Trump drinks a dozen Diet Cokes a day! The newspaper tells you this ‘investigation’ into Trump’s daily routine is based on interviews from 60 advisers and others who have worked closely with the president. And the newspaper stands by its “sources”!

The Harvard analysts who found the media bias against Trump months ago had a very prescient piece of advice for the ‘Diet Coke’ media: “Journalists would also do well to spend less time in Washington and more time in places where policy intersects with people’s lives. If they had done so during the presidential campaign, they would not have missed the story that keyed Trump’s victory—the fading of the American Dream for millions of ordinary people.”