Media’s Servile Coverage of Trump’s Candidacy is Journalistic Malpractice

Interview with Chris Lehmann, D.C. bureau chief with The Nation magazine, conducted by Scott Harris

In a recent article for The Nation magazine, Chris Lehmann recounts how U.S. corporate media has since 2016 played down and softened Trump’s racist and authoritarian rhetoric, often attributing his words to claims that it was said as a joke, an exaggeration to get attention – or to “own the libs.” But Lehmann points out that during Trump’s four years as president, he followed through on implementing some of the nation’s most bigoted and odious policies, such as the infamous Muslim ban, revealing the failure of mainstream media to responsibly inform readers and viewers about Trump’s malevolent views.

In the closing days of the campaign, Trump’s New York City Madison Square Garden rally didn’t disappoint critics who had predicted that the former disgraced president and his sycophants would re-enact the 1939 pro-Nazi rally also held at the Garden 85 years earlier.  The rally featured speaker after speaker echoing Trump’s racist, xenophobic and misogynist world view – with one so-called “comedian” declaring that Puerto Rico was a “garbage island.” While media coverage of Trump’s repugnant language over the years has often substituted benign euphemisms for actual reporting, this time most media accurately conveyed the rally’s hateful, vile vibe.

The fact that the billionaire owners of the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times refused to endorse a presidential candidate in this year’s election is one more sign on how Trump is succeeding in intimidating the nation’s press. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Chris Lehmann, the Nation’s D.C. bureau chief, about his article, titled “The Press Needs to Start Taking Trump Literally,” where he takes a critical look at the distorted and often sanitized coverage of Donald Trump and his campaign infused with hate and fear.

CHRIS LEHMANN: There has been this very, I think, disastrous self-consciously distancing effect that mainstream political reporters have adopted. And covering the Trump phenomenon — all during the sort of 2016 GOP primary cycle, they treated him as largely as a joke, a novelty, a reality TV spectacle. That was sort of when this corrosive process of not taking what he said seriously started to sink in and, famously, this right-wing columnist Salena Zito put forward the diktat to journalists and voters generally that they should be taking Trump seriously, but not literally.

Salena Zito now is an abject Trump toady who literally sort of suggested that God intervene to save Trump’s life at the Butler, Pennsylvania assassination attempt. So that’s where taking him Trump seriously, but not literally gets you, in my view. You know, you’re suspending your critical faculties and you’re doing a profound disservice to the public interest, which is easy to forget in these debauched days.

But that is what the press is there for. If you’re downplaying an authoritarian threat, you’re normalizing authoritarian conduct. And we saw this right out of the gate, in Trump’s first administration, not only with things like the Muslim ban. But people forget these things in part because the political press has the attention span of a gnat. But, Trump immediately created a federal agency to document the alleged wave of undocumented immigrant violent crime, even though objectively, there has never been any such wave. Undocumented immigrants commit such crimes at a rate significantly lower than the native population.

Yes, I would argue it’s also an early tell that Trump was, in fact, a fascist, because that is what fascists do. They create the myth of irredeemable group traits to target minorities and persecute them. He also established, very early on, appointed Kris Kobach to head a presidential commission on rampant election fraud, of which there was none.

And, the commission eventually disbanded in shame. But it’s the same pattern. And, you know, I do feel this far going on 10 years into the Trump era for journalists to be continuing to adopt this pose — to quote Zoolander, I feel like I’m talking crazy. I think there is absolutely no excuse for this kind of malpractice among political journalists.

SCOTT HARRIS: I wanted to refer to one of your recent articles, titled, “The Washington Post’s Craven Capitulation to the Billionaire Class.” The billionaire owners of the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong, who owns the LA Times, they declined to endorse a presidential candidate in this year’s election, owing, according to many of their fear of retribution if Trump is elected.

And, to many, this is dangerous. It’s alarming and it’s really, what professor of philosophy Jason Stanley, who wrote the book How Fascism Works, and he describes this act as “anticipatory obedience” in his study of fascism, which is precisely what these two owners of these major newspapers did.

CHRIS LEHMANN: Absolutely. And one thing that is especially appalling about the Post doing this is, of course, the Post’s, you know, deserved reputation as a hard-hitting and impartial investigative paper is founded on its reportage of Watergate, which was about a power mad authoritarian Republican president who defied constitutional order, broke the law, tried to weaponize the executive branch to punish his political enemies.

All these acts Donald Trump has committed to the nth power in comparison to Nixon. And for the Post to be taking this stand, or this non-stand, rather, of pretending that an endorsement doesn’t matter, which is, I guess, Jeff Bezos just published a column defending his decision, saying that endorsements don’t matter. You know, I’m tired of this phony, jadedness.

And also the pundit class and the billionaire class. You can say all kinds of things don’t matter, but you own the platform, Mr. Billionaire, and you own the public responsibility that goes with that. He did not dodge an endorsement in the 2020 race. In fact, according to Marty Baron, Bezos said why wouldn’t we endorse? The question still holds today, especially amid all the obvious factors.

We’ve been discussing the clear mental deterioration of Trump, Trump’s further descent into overt fascism, the consolidation of a very motivated, anti-democratic governing elite behind Project 2025. This, of all cycles, is not one to sit out if you’re a newspaper that’s serious about your public responsibility, and what Jeff Bezos has told his readers is that he’s not serious about their responsibility.

And as a result, 200,000 readers have canceled their subscriptions to The Washington Post. Unfortunately, that, of course, won’t make a dent in the oceanic fortune of Jeff Bezos. And it hurts the, you know, people who are doing good work at the Washington Post. I think, you know, if you’re going to boycott events, which I totally support, you should hit him where it hurts and its the Amazon Prime account.

Listen to Scott Harris’ in-depth interview with Chris Lehmann (26:41) and see more articles and opinion pieces in the Related Links section of this page.

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