NYT also has this presumptuous framing of stories were they frequently attribute motives and cynicism to Harris's actions and plans. Such as, she announces that she's going to visit the border; rather than report that, they write a headline and story that (paraphrasing) is framed like: In an effort to show she's tough on immigration blah blah…This is not an isolated example; it''s something they did with Biden as well. And it's infuriating because they report so credulously on Trump and his surrogates. At the very least, be honest move these stories to the opinion section.
Have also been wondering why JD Vance is getting all the coverage in the mainstream media when we read nothing about Tim Walz. It’s seems obvious that Vance (and Trump) are using the media by simply making up outrageous lies. Springfield, Ohio, for example, which totally overshadowed Harris’s speech and plan for the economy. Does the mainstream media really think this is not planned by Trump et al? It’s about coverage, stupid. And the media keeps falling into the same trap. Thanks for your comments, Margaret, as always.
You make a really good point. The media is dominated by coverage of trump and vance just because they are so outrageous. There is no focus on issues at all.
Margaret it is a great comfort and uplift to read your work provided to us here on Substack. This weekend The NY Times - IMHO - abdicated all responsibility to journalistic integrity when they ran the headline "Can Harris's Economic Plan Top Trump's?" (NYT's Business Section, page B1 09-28-2024). Margaret - ten out of ten economists will tell you his "Tariff Plan" is insane. I write public communications for non-profits - where it's accepted that we need to write to an audience with the literacy skills of a 12 year-old. It's well known that the vast majority of Americans will run the other way when you say the word, "economics." And yet they somehow believe that the POTUS is the driver of what's happening to their wallets!! Trump has repeatedly claimed that the sole cause for inflation in the US is "energy costs." This is a terrible lie. He then goes on to claim that the solution is "drill baby drill." This is dangerous rhetoric. Look at the recent death and destruction from Hurricane Helene!! Where is the effective communications from the media to educate the public on how egregiously Trump misleads them on economics? And by "effectively" I mean in a manner that both engages and educates the public?
I've come to agree with this – that publishers editors and reporters are intimidated by Trump and appear to fear retribution from him and his mob were they to report how crazy and dangerous his hate filled rhetoric is.
As a (now retired) reporter for nearly four decades, I’ll venture this explanation for the news media’s timorous and not-up-to-the-task coverage: We simply do not know how to cover an incoherent, mendacious, shameless, epithet-spewing insult machine. Before him, however vile a politician might be, they could be made to fit into more or less conventional journalistic strictures and covered as such. Not this guy, who not only defies every political norm but defies the most basic conventions of ordinary human decency. The media isn’t so much consciously normalizing him as throwing up their collective hands because they have no precedents to guide them. And of course there are other factors at work as well: fear of being seen as biased; fear of physical threats to life and limb; and a desire to maintain access. But the main explanation, I’m convinced, is that news outlets are loath to abandon the journalistic conventions of “fairness” and “balance” even when it leads to bothsidesism, sanewashing and manifestly unfair and unbalanced coverage.
Jeez Dan, Margaret et al have been pounding this drum for years, as has the late, great Eric Boehlert, and James Fallows eg and showing in their writings and, I’m sure teaching, HOW to cover the craziness of TFG. I’ve lost confidence in a press I used to trust. I’m 77 and have seen how profit over good political journalism has won out.
Margaret Sullivan, while you did include the video clip of Trump at that rally, to the believers in language who read your column, it would be more impactful to include a full transcript of his words to heighten the impact and not just dismiss his ugly remarks in that “speech.” Perhaps the Times could show a page or two or three showing the particularly vial remarks in rally after rally!
Today I saw people saying that republicans were finally criticizing trump, that he had gone too far. Then I read what they were saying. He should talk about the economy and not make personal attacks. Far from a criticism.
Journalism could be so much better! Consider how little attention other journalists paid to the Sulzberger oped in the Washington Post when he predicted the future suppression of fact-based news by a Trump administration. Nothing seems to get through.
trump and vance are running a classic racist campaign but the media is afraid to call it out. trump is also projecting all his faults onto Harris but the media will never point it out. Harris should respond by saying, Donald you are projecting again.
Good morning, Margaret. I had not heard that CBS had decided not to fact-check the VP candidates in real time. I think that is a huge mistake, albeit not a surprising one. My expectations of most major mainstream news outlets have gotten incredibly low.
I have a love/hate relationship with Morning Joe. However, they do a good job of analyzing and exposing Trump's unhinged rants and his dissolution into dementia. I wish the mainstream outlets would call Trump out.
It’s an abomination that CBS won’t fact check. How can the public discern which candidate is telling the truth if likely both will say each other are lying. Where does that leave the audience if there is no mediator to help set the foundation for what is true? Very disappointing.
As a retired Baltimore Sun reporter, I appreciate your perceptive criticism of our profession.
But beyond the sanewashing and timidity constraining coverage of Donald Trump, reporters and editors have also been lax in examining issues that are in plain sight. In part, they seem to be filtering out the plain meaning of what he says — as if concluding Trump can’t really be serious.
In particular, leading press outlets have utterly failed to explore the truly frightening implications of “mass deportation,” despite it being a centerpiece of the RNC.
So there has been no explanation of what it means to “send ‘em back.”
Send them where? What happens when migrants’ countries of origin refuse to accommodate Trump’s deportation program — a predictable result as an influx of returnees could be economically and politically destabilizing.
So if the predictable occurs, we would see a burgeoning population being concentrated in camps. The presumed Trump administration would then be faced with the expense of feeding these migrants, ensuring security and providing health care. Nothing in Trump’s record suggests he would look kindly on providing minimum standards of care.
On the other hand, the country would likely be faced with severe labor shortages in multiple industries — especially agriculture. That would lead pressures for a solution from core Trump constituencies.
The Trumpian solution is glaringly obvious — forced labor. The same GOP-aligned private prison companies that would be paid to run the migrant camps would find a lucrative new line of business as forced labor contractors. This will create jobs for MAGA goons as armed overseers, but the migrants forced to work would receive pennies if any pay at all. (As an aside, the opportunities for sex abuse would be an inevitable perk for the overseers. Can you see a Trump DOJ protecting the victims?)
Would the courts intervene? It doesn’t matter. The Supreme Court has given the president total immunity. He can tell the courts to take a hike.
There then remains the question of what happens if the supply of detained migrants exceeds the demand for their labor or the pace of deportation.
Would a Trump administration absorb the cost of feeding them or would it look for another, more final solution?
Does this sound crazy? Perhaps. But news organizations should ask the hard questions about “mass deportations” and follow the money.
NYT also has this presumptuous framing of stories were they frequently attribute motives and cynicism to Harris's actions and plans. Such as, she announces that she's going to visit the border; rather than report that, they write a headline and story that (paraphrasing) is framed like: In an effort to show she's tough on immigration blah blah…This is not an isolated example; it''s something they did with Biden as well. And it's infuriating because they report so credulously on Trump and his surrogates. At the very least, be honest move these stories to the opinion section.
Have also been wondering why JD Vance is getting all the coverage in the mainstream media when we read nothing about Tim Walz. It’s seems obvious that Vance (and Trump) are using the media by simply making up outrageous lies. Springfield, Ohio, for example, which totally overshadowed Harris’s speech and plan for the economy. Does the mainstream media really think this is not planned by Trump et al? It’s about coverage, stupid. And the media keeps falling into the same trap. Thanks for your comments, Margaret, as always.
You make a really good point. The media is dominated by coverage of trump and vance just because they are so outrageous. There is no focus on issues at all.
Margaret it is a great comfort and uplift to read your work provided to us here on Substack. This weekend The NY Times - IMHO - abdicated all responsibility to journalistic integrity when they ran the headline "Can Harris's Economic Plan Top Trump's?" (NYT's Business Section, page B1 09-28-2024). Margaret - ten out of ten economists will tell you his "Tariff Plan" is insane. I write public communications for non-profits - where it's accepted that we need to write to an audience with the literacy skills of a 12 year-old. It's well known that the vast majority of Americans will run the other way when you say the word, "economics." And yet they somehow believe that the POTUS is the driver of what's happening to their wallets!! Trump has repeatedly claimed that the sole cause for inflation in the US is "energy costs." This is a terrible lie. He then goes on to claim that the solution is "drill baby drill." This is dangerous rhetoric. Look at the recent death and destruction from Hurricane Helene!! Where is the effective communications from the media to educate the public on how egregiously Trump misleads them on economics? And by "effectively" I mean in a manner that both engages and educates the public?
Media sanewashing, no fact-checking by moderators? Really, it all comes down to one word.
Cowardice.
I've come to agree with this – that publishers editors and reporters are intimidated by Trump and appear to fear retribution from him and his mob were they to report how crazy and dangerous his hate filled rhetoric is.
Well, two: cowardice and complicity.
IMO it always comes back to greed and money at the top. SOOO disheartening.
The personal insult is vile, but in my view this is a story is about incitement through demonization.
As a (now retired) reporter for nearly four decades, I’ll venture this explanation for the news media’s timorous and not-up-to-the-task coverage: We simply do not know how to cover an incoherent, mendacious, shameless, epithet-spewing insult machine. Before him, however vile a politician might be, they could be made to fit into more or less conventional journalistic strictures and covered as such. Not this guy, who not only defies every political norm but defies the most basic conventions of ordinary human decency. The media isn’t so much consciously normalizing him as throwing up their collective hands because they have no precedents to guide them. And of course there are other factors at work as well: fear of being seen as biased; fear of physical threats to life and limb; and a desire to maintain access. But the main explanation, I’m convinced, is that news outlets are loath to abandon the journalistic conventions of “fairness” and “balance” even when it leads to bothsidesism, sanewashing and manifestly unfair and unbalanced coverage.
Jeez Dan, Margaret et al have been pounding this drum for years, as has the late, great Eric Boehlert, and James Fallows eg and showing in their writings and, I’m sure teaching, HOW to cover the craziness of TFG. I’ve lost confidence in a press I used to trust. I’m 77 and have seen how profit over good political journalism has won out.
Margaret Sullivan, while you did include the video clip of Trump at that rally, to the believers in language who read your column, it would be more impactful to include a full transcript of his words to heighten the impact and not just dismiss his ugly remarks in that “speech.” Perhaps the Times could show a page or two or three showing the particularly vial remarks in rally after rally!
Why does the MSM whitewash and normalize Trump? What do they get for doing this? Future access if Trump wins? How does they sleep at night?
The network of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather proves itself weaker than very weak Trump.
Today I saw people saying that republicans were finally criticizing trump, that he had gone too far. Then I read what they were saying. He should talk about the economy and not make personal attacks. Far from a criticism.
Journalism could be so much better! Consider how little attention other journalists paid to the Sulzberger oped in the Washington Post when he predicted the future suppression of fact-based news by a Trump administration. Nothing seems to get through.
trump and vance are running a classic racist campaign but the media is afraid to call it out. trump is also projecting all his faults onto Harris but the media will never point it out. Harris should respond by saying, Donald you are projecting again.
Good morning, Margaret. I had not heard that CBS had decided not to fact-check the VP candidates in real time. I think that is a huge mistake, albeit not a surprising one. My expectations of most major mainstream news outlets have gotten incredibly low.
I have a love/hate relationship with Morning Joe. However, they do a good job of analyzing and exposing Trump's unhinged rants and his dissolution into dementia. I wish the mainstream outlets would call Trump out.
I feel the same way.
It’s an abomination that CBS won’t fact check. How can the public discern which candidate is telling the truth if likely both will say each other are lying. Where does that leave the audience if there is no mediator to help set the foundation for what is true? Very disappointing.
As a retired Baltimore Sun reporter, I appreciate your perceptive criticism of our profession.
But beyond the sanewashing and timidity constraining coverage of Donald Trump, reporters and editors have also been lax in examining issues that are in plain sight. In part, they seem to be filtering out the plain meaning of what he says — as if concluding Trump can’t really be serious.
In particular, leading press outlets have utterly failed to explore the truly frightening implications of “mass deportation,” despite it being a centerpiece of the RNC.
So there has been no explanation of what it means to “send ‘em back.”
Send them where? What happens when migrants’ countries of origin refuse to accommodate Trump’s deportation program — a predictable result as an influx of returnees could be economically and politically destabilizing.
So if the predictable occurs, we would see a burgeoning population being concentrated in camps. The presumed Trump administration would then be faced with the expense of feeding these migrants, ensuring security and providing health care. Nothing in Trump’s record suggests he would look kindly on providing minimum standards of care.
On the other hand, the country would likely be faced with severe labor shortages in multiple industries — especially agriculture. That would lead pressures for a solution from core Trump constituencies.
The Trumpian solution is glaringly obvious — forced labor. The same GOP-aligned private prison companies that would be paid to run the migrant camps would find a lucrative new line of business as forced labor contractors. This will create jobs for MAGA goons as armed overseers, but the migrants forced to work would receive pennies if any pay at all. (As an aside, the opportunities for sex abuse would be an inevitable perk for the overseers. Can you see a Trump DOJ protecting the victims?)
Would the courts intervene? It doesn’t matter. The Supreme Court has given the president total immunity. He can tell the courts to take a hike.
There then remains the question of what happens if the supply of detained migrants exceeds the demand for their labor or the pace of deportation.
Would a Trump administration absorb the cost of feeding them or would it look for another, more final solution?
Does this sound crazy? Perhaps. But news organizations should ask the hard questions about “mass deportations” and follow the money.