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.
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