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A little over a year ago, Iowa held its presidential caucuses on the Republican side, and it was really, really cold. Various news outlets used the weather as a metaphor for the state of the race (sample headlines: âDeep Freezeâ; âIn Iowa, a campaign season frozen in placeâ; âHere Comes Trump, the Abominable Snowmanâ). As I wrote at the time, the cold also seemed to symbolize a lack of media enthusiasm as events were canceled and reporters milled around looking to fill the time until Trump inevitably won and they could go home. Almost as soon as voters showed up to caucus, major news decision desks called Trump as the winner; in response, Ron DeSantis (remember him?) accused the media of being âin the tank for Trump.â Eventually, Trump spoke, and various pundits noted his newly gracious tone. He also claimed the 2020 election was rigged and invited onstage a man dressed as a border wall. MSNBC refused to air the speech. CNN cut away before it was done.
Today, Trump will return to the White House, and it is really, really coldâso much so that Trump announced, in a social media post on Friday, that his inauguration will be moved indoors. It will now take place in the Capitol Rotunda instead. âThis will be a very beautiful experience for all,â Trump pledged, âespecially for the large TV audience!â Nonetheless, Politicoâs DC Playbook newsletter declared âthe mediaâ a âloserâ of the switch. âNo formal plans have yet been announced, but itâs hard to see anything more than a small portion of the credentialed media being allowed in the room to personally witness the oath of office,â the outlet wrote on Saturday; plus, âfreezing your butt off at a presidential inauguration is a rite of passage for many junior Washington reporters.â (We will, at least, be spared the tedious litigation of how many people showed up. Not that weâre necessarily being spared Sean Spicer.)
So far, Iâve seen fewer cold-based metaphors in the coverage than in Iowa last yearâthough the chill is once again a convenient symbol of how many journalists and their bosses are feeling, albeit, this time, more out of apprehension than lack of enthusiasm. (Though the latter feeling is palpable, too.) Reaching for a geological, rather than meteorological, metaphor, the media reporter Paul Farhi noted in Vanity Fair last week that journalists are âsensitive to even small tremorsâ emanating from Trumpâs orbit at the moment; among other things, theyâre wondering whether the new administration might throw disfavored reportersâor, perhaps, all reportersâout of the White House briefing room, replacing them with pro-MAGA outlets and influencers. (âI donât think he intends to pack reporters off to GuantĂĄnamo,â one cable news veteran told Farhi, âbut who the hell knows.â) Also writing last week, David Enrich and Katie Roberston, of the New York Times, reported that newsrooms are already preempting even starker threats: upping their use of encrypted communications to protect reporters and their sources against subpoenas; evaluating whether their libel insurance is sufficient to cover a wave of suits from officials; making sure their tax and visa paperwork can withstand politicized scrutiny. The Associated Press assessed how much latitude Trump might have to âcaptureâ Voice of America, the US-backed international broadcaster that is supposed to be editorially independent. (The verdict: potentially quite a lot, despite legal safeguards.) Reporters Without Borders perhaps put it most succinctly when it noted that American journalism is about to enter a period of âunprecedented uncertainty.â
Not that weâre entirely in wait-and-see mode: in recent days, various Trump critics have argued that sections of the media have frozen at his chilling touch even before he retakes office, citing everything from individual cable scheduling decisions (last week, the media reporter Oliver Darcy scooped that CNNâs Jim Acosta, a perpetual thorn in Trumpâs side during his first term, might be moved to a graveyard slot on the network despite scoring strong ratings) to ABCâs move, before Christmas, to settle a libel suit that Trump brought, even though many observers felt that it was eminently defensible. (On Friday, the Wall Street Journal added grist to this mill when it reported that executives at Paramount Globalâwhich owns CBS News, and is pursuing a merger that will require the new administrationâs approvalâhave discussed settling a different Trump suit that is less eminently defensible than absolutely risible.) Nor is this observation limited to Trump critics. Spicer (yep, him again) suggested to the Times that the âmassiveâ âcorporate mediaâ âresistanceâ that marked Trumpâs first entry into office has melted away. Per the same paper, Trump himself âsmellsâ the mediaâs âweakness.â
This is clearly a moment of disorientation for the mainstream press, one that predates Trumpâs reelection and has only deepened since then, with the outcomeâand its apparently unavoidable corollary that, if not a majority, then a plurality of Americans totally disregarded traditional media efforts to hold Trump accountable for obvious wrongdoingâtriggering an avalanche of self-doubt and introspection. In recent weeks, this feeling has seeped awkwardly into the sort of honeymoon coverage that presidential victors tend to enjoyâsurely mixed up, too, with fear as to what sort of vengeance Trump might now wreak on the press. At the executive and ownership level, there have, indeed, been worrying signs of obeisance in advance. (Probably the most visible example: Jeff Bezosâthe owner of the Washington Post, who is generally said to be a hands-off figure but did spike the paperâs endorsement of Kamala Harris right before the electionâwill attend the inauguration today alongside other tech titans, even if the imagined visuals of this scene have been scrambled by the weather.) As I see it, though, claims of a broader pro-Trump vibe shift in the mainstream press are complicated: not only because there continues to be sharp coverage of his incoming administration, but because Trump coverage was, on the whole, hardly a profile in clear-eyed courage before he won reelection. (See: his gracious tone in Iowa a year ago.)
Rather than a wholesale wilting, we are entering, as I see it, yet another iteration of the perennial how to cover Trump debate. In recent days, ink has predictably been spilled on this question, too. Various media bigwigs have projected steadfastness in the face of Trumpâs threats. (âI think, to some degree, we should be self-critical, but we should stop apologizing for everything we do,â David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, told the Washington Postâs Jeremy Barr recently. âI think that journalism during the first Trump administration achieved an enormous amount in terms of its investigative reporting. And if weâre going to go into a mode where weâre doing nothing but apologizing and falling into a faint and accepting a false picture of reality because we think thatâs what fairness demands, then I think weâre making an enormous mistake.â) Others have proposed changes to the way we do things: broadening the lens beyond Trump and his rhetoric to pay more attention to his deeds and those of his appointees; assigning reporters to cover MAGA media full time; deemphasizing pundits and spending more time in the country. Others still have recommended restraint and a resistance to hyperbole or undue negativity, offering Trump praise when itâs merited and covering his administration through âas conventional a lens as possible.â Jim VandeHei, the CEO of Axios, told Vanity Fairâs Natalie Korach that his outlet will proceed âclinically, fearlessly, not emotionally.â Unlike outlets that fanboy Trumpâor, conversely, treat his presidency as a âcrime beatâââweâre not hyperventilating, weâre not trying to put our fingers on the scale,â VandeHei said.
Again, this all looks to me like an old debate cycling around once again, albeit on new political terrain. In many ways, itâs a debate that can now feel pointless, or like a relic of times past: viewed one way, it can seem moot given Trumpâs clear victory; looked at another, it can seem trivial in light of the concrete harms he might now visit on the press. But I think, without having much desire to relive it, that the debate is destined to recur and continue recurring, because it is fundamental to the relationship between Trump and the press. At the very least, it will be inseparable from the story of his efforts to chill the press in his second term; going forward, the task of working out what media behavior constitutes frightening new obeisance and what is just standard-issue Beltway bullshit will be an important one, and not always straightforward. Andâif Trump does appear to be squatting, imperially, athwart the political landscape for nowâI donât see that lasting very long. The âresistanceâ to his politics is not as dead as some current reports would have you believe. The question of whether the press is resistingâshould resist, what resistance means anywayâsurely isnât dead, either.
In the days after Trump won again, I offered some thoughts on how we ought to think about covering his second administration. I wonât recapitulate those at length here, but I do think itâs worth saying again that, while the result demands humilityâor, at least, curiosityâfrom the traditional press, it doesnât negate the need to hold Trump accountable, or require forgetting the things he did that demanded accountability before, or even seeing them in a new light. (Of all the disorienting media moments of the transition period, perhaps the most jarring came two weeks ago, on January 6, when you could almost feel major outlets working out how to cover Trump sailing through the mundane process that he shamelessly disrupted four years earlier.) Itâs also worth noting again that, from this day forward, thereâs no contradiction between focusing more on Trumpâs actions and sharpening coverage of his wordsâin my view, still the most persistent failing of the wider Trump era. (Early headlines previewing Trumpâs âunityâ message in his inaugural address today donât fill me with hope.)
As well as being Inauguration Day, today is Martin Luther King Dayâa holiday that, last year, happened to coincide with the Iowa caucuses. Yesterday, Politicoâs Playbook newsletter shared a newsy nugget (from a new book by one of the outletâs reporters) about that day: an adviser reportedly proposed at the time that Trump appear publicly in front of an image of King being arrested that would âdissolveâ into an image of Trump, a stunt that would underscore Trumpâs supposed persecution by the criminal justice system and, the adviser hoped, âblow the mediaâs mind.â In the end, this didnât happen. But the context for the proposal hasnât just gone away, even if most of the criminal cases against Trump literally have. The attention-grabbing impulses of Trumpworld havenât changed either: for all that Trump might want to chill media coverage, he also, in a larger sense, depends on it (and might even use the media as a vehicle for chilling other constituencies). Itâs been suggested that his new administration will quickly execute immigration raids this week, at least in part as a âshock and aweâ play for media attention. In some ways, itâs not such a far cry from pulling onstage a man dressed as a border wall. The stakes, of course, are now vastly higher.
Other notable stories:
- For CJR, the photojournalist Alan Chin reflects on documenting the campaign season that led Trump back to the White House, and speaks with colleagues about how they see what happened. âAmericans are told almost every four years that the current presidential election is the âmost important one of your lifetime.â Itâs hard to avoid concluding that the photojournalism covering this past high-stakes cycleâcapturing one important moment after anotherâhelped lead to the outcome,â Chin writes. As Trump returns, âitâs worth considering how we choose the images we shoot and publishâŚ. How photojournalists cover these next four years will be as critical as the past eight. Because 2028 will once again be the most important election of our lifetimesâand the ways that Americans look at ourselves will continue to be decisive.â
- On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled, as expected, to uphold a law passed last year banning TikTok in the US in the event that its Chinese owner didnât divest the app, paving the way for the ban to come into effect yesterday. The outgoing Biden administration suggested that it wouldnât enforce the ban, effectively punting the problem to Trump, but as yesterday dawned, TikTok nonetheless took itself offline. Hours later, access was restored after Trump pledged to sign an executive order delaying enforcement to give TikTokâs owner more time to divest (and not to punish any tech companies supporting the app prior to the order being signed)âthough Trumpâs order could face pushback in the courts or from Congress. Stay tuned.
- Also on Friday, a jury in Florida found against CNN in a defamation case brought by Zachary Young, a security contractor, over a 2021 segment on the network about the high costs of evacuating people from Afghanistan after the country fell to the Taliban; at one point, the segment displayed Youngâs face on-screen at the same time as a graphic referencing âblack marketsâ (even though the voiceover did not make the same link). The jury awarded Young five million dollars and moved to add punitive damages on topâthough CNN settled before those could be outlined. CNN defended its journalists but pledged to take âwhat useful lessons we canâ from the case.
- The opinion section of the New York Times is undergoing a shakeup: on Friday, Kathleen Kingsbury, the opinion editor, announced that two high-profile columnistsâCharles Blow and Pamela Paulâare leaving the section, alongside two other members of staff; meanwhile, Semaforâs Max Tani reports that Kingsbury is weighing how the section might âmodernizeâ its process of endorsing political candidates in the future. Elsewhere, the recent exodus from the Washington Post looks set to continue: per Darcy, Philip Rucker, the national editor, is close to joining CNN.
- And Tom Goldsteinâa prominent lawyer who cofounded and publishes SCOTUSblog, a widely respected source of information and analysis about the Supreme Courtâwas indicted last week on charges including âtax evasion, assisting in the preparation of fraudulent tax returns, failing to pay taxes and false statements to mortgage lenders,â the Post reports. The indictment alleges that Goldstein was âan ultrahigh-stakes poker playerâ who incurred big losses and didnât always report winningsâand that, at one point, he carried nearly a million dollars in cash in a duffel bag on a flight from Hong Kong to DC. (His lawyers contest the claims against him.)
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