Thirteen words about covering Trump
Legendary editor Marty Baron and incisive press critic Jay Rosen offer pithy phrases. Who's right?
“We’re not at war; we’re at work,” said Washington Post then-executive editor Marty Baron about a year into the Trump administration, when the paper was under attack by Trump allies who defined the traditional media as the “opposition party.”
The precise quote, uttered during a public appearance, was a little longer — "We’re not at war with the administration; we’re at work.” But it’s been shortened in memory, and those who encounter it know what it means in either form. Just do the journalism; let the reporting do the talking.
Celebrated by most journalists, and criticized by those who thought the press should be at war with Trump, the idea even is emblazoned on a wall in the Post newsroom, attributed to Baron. In his recent book, “Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos and the Washington Post,” Baron describes his approach to journalism as he harshly criticizes BuzzFeed News’s decision to publish the so-called Steele dossier without verifying its contents. “Count me an unabashed traditionalist.”
Baron left the Post last year, as I did a few months later. But before he left, he led the initial coverage of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, which won a Pulitzer Prize. His tenure at the Post is widely admired, especially by those who favor what’s sometimes called his “old-school” approach.
Then there’s Jay Rosen, the well respected NYU professor and press critic, who offers a different vision.
“Not the odds, but the stakes.” With that elegant phrase, coined this year, Rosen is urging the press to focus its coverage of the 2024 presidential election on something other than the horserace (the odds of who will win, based on polls or conjecture). He wants coverage to emphasize what’s riding on the election: arguably, American democracy itself. If this comes off as partisan, so be it, I think Rosen would say. I wrote about his unconvinced view of “We’re not at war, we’re at work,” in my 2022 memoir, “Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) from an Ink-Stained Life.”
Some journalists are listening to Rosen. His phrase has gained currency, although it’s sometimes rendered slightly differently (never better, though): “It’s the stakes, not the odds,” for example. I keep writing columns hammering a similar point, and so do Will Bunch, the Philadelphia Inquirer national columnist, Dan Froomkin who writes the Press Watch newsletter, Molly Jong-Fast of Vanity Fair, and others.
These two pithy phrases are in tension with each other without being direct contradictions. They reflect their respective moments — separated by Jan. 6, by Trump’s efforts to overturn the election and by recent reporting about Trump’s authoritarian plans should he be elected next year. A lot has happened.
Does this mean that the press now needs to be “at war”? In a sense, yes.
We need to fight for the public to clearly understand what a Trump presidency will bring.
We need to fight our own reliance on falsely equivalent coverage, or “both-sidesing” in the clumsy expression, in which a Republican Party gone off the rails is treated as if it’s normal: Politics as usual.
We need to fight — using the tools of good reporting, smart editorial decision-making, and courage to withstand criticism — for democracy itself.
There’s a long way to go, as Post opinion writer Paul Waldman pointed out, as he criticized a too-cautious Associated Press headline. It read: “Trump hints at expanded role for the military within the U.S. … A legacy law gives him few guardrails.”
Waldman’s apt comment: “When the almost certain nominee of a major party is promising to DEPLOY THE MILITARY TO CRUSH POLITICAL DISSENT, the headline describing it ought to go further than ‘Trump hints at expanded role for the military within the U.S.’”
In other words, make the stakes obvious: Use clear, strong language — including in headlines, since many readers stop there.
What do you think of these approaches? Does the press need to be “at war” with Trump, and what would that look like in practice? Do journalists have anything to lose by moving away from a more traditional model?
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I think Americans who aren't politically engaged believe that regardless of who is in the White House, their lives will go on as usual. They shrug it off with, "So what? All politicians are crooks." So to me, the challenge is to take what we know Trump will do and extrapolate that in a powerful, all-too-real way, showing unengaged voters what their lives would be like if Trump and the GOP established fascism here.
I read a book about the French Resistance, and less than 3% of the French joined it. The rest either collaborated with the Nazis or simply adapted to the new order and went on with their lives.
So that's the challenge, I think. We need to take Trump's announced plans and make the impact so real, so tangible, that people can't ignore how THEIR lives, THEIR kids, THEIR health and well-being will be affected. If Trump rounds up millions of immigrants, would there be a food shortage due to a labor shortage? If Trump wages war on the press, would all news orgs have to become Fox or go under? If Trump deploys the military on our streets, is that martial law, and what is martial law like? Would we have a curfew, or have to show government-approved papers to travel to see family in another state? If Trump shuts down the FBI and DOJ, how will that affect our public safety and crime rates?
Those questions keep ME up at night, and I'd like to share my insomniac experience with the millions of Americans who are presently all too willing to lose democracy by default - by just plain not showing up, because they think it won't matter.
Yes, the stakes not the odds. But the broad lack of understanding about how our systems operate demands that journalists incorporate basic civics lessons in their work. How does this threat to big D democracy translate to little d democracy at the federal, state, or local level and potentially impact lives.
Stripping out SEC admin law judges? Boring. Who cares? Focus on why financial market oversight matters and what happens when folks are fleeced with impunity.