Do Top-Tier Media Types Think They Will Be Spared in a Trump Crackdown? Theories of Media Complicity

On his morning show earlier this week, Joe Scarborough commented on the press's obsession with false equivalence, saying in exasperated tones that "everybody [in the political media] is so desperate to make this a normal presidential campaign instead of a campaign between someone who ... wants to undermine American democracy and another candidate who doesn't."  (Clip here, starting at 2:00)  I honestly did not think that Scarborough would be the one to offer that long overdue criticism so clearly, but that is why this is so notable.  Even the guy who has over the years gone all in on "cancel culture" panic and mocked student protesters is now shocked by how badly his colleagues in the media are laundering Trumpist insanity.

Can they change?  As the summer ended, the political press was certain to become bored with the Harris-as-shiny-new-thing narrative, which meant that they would inevitably begin to run chin-strokers about Kamala Harris's campaign “stalling” (or something).  But just as I was noticing early hints of the emergence of that attempt to be edgy and counter-trendy -- which would of course immediately become trendy -- Donald Trump's complete meltdown in Tuesday's non-debate forced them to delay (not cancel) a new story arc that would be friendly to Trump and would drive headlines for a few weeks.

I say "delay (not cancel)" because there are certain fundamental laws in the mediaverse that are as predictable and constant as gravity and the speed of light.  Whenever there is no new story in a real sense, another horse-race analysis based on the latest batch of polls is a reliable way to create whatever "evidence-based" analysis one chooses.  If Harris slips behind Trump in even one poll, she will be deemed to be "suddenly losing."  If she slips a bit but stays ahead, she will be "losing her lead."  Even if she does not slip, she will be declared to be "peaking" or "leveling off."

And if none of that is happening, the question will instead be: "Things are good now, but how long can it last?"  Because none of that is based on anything that the candidates have been saying or doing, it lets Trump off the hook and treats him just like any other candidate in a close race.  To be clear, this kind of journalism, with its contrived ebbs and flows, has always done a disservice to readers and democracy itself, but it is immeasurably worse when one of the candidates is an existential threat to the rule of law.

The question posed by the headline to this column -- "Do Top-Tier Media Types Think They Will Be Spared in a Trump Crackdown?" -- is based in part on the obvious fact that the rich and powerful always think of themselves at least in some ways as above the law.  On mundane matters, they think that they will get do-overs whenever they do anything wrong, such as submitting an inaccurate form to a government agency, even though poor people can lose essential benefits for years due to the smallest error.  Rich kids who drive drunk are treated less harshly than others.  And so on.

This sense of untouchability is hardly limited to the political right, or even to the people at the very top of the pyramid.  People I know who share my progressive political views definitely fear for the future of the country, but they sometimes acknowledge to each other that educated, upper-middle class people will probably "do just fine" in a post-democratic America.  That is by no means a reason to acquiesce to Trumpism, but it is a reality that the kind of fanaticism that leads fascist elements to demonize people based on race, religion, citizenship status, gender conformity, and so on tends only to be visited on non-obvious others for very specific reasons.  In my case, that specific reason is being a professor, which is more than enough to negate any free pass that I might otherwise enjoy for being a straight, White, male who is not on public assistance.  For most people who are otherwise like me, however, they truly might do just fine.

But if the universities are uniquely a target of the violent, authoritarian right, so surely is the media.  Republicans have been vilifying the press for generations, and the current crop of emboldened fascists are ready to take action against reporters, columnists, and editors.  On Verdict today, Jon May reminded readers that the January 6th Committee's report includes a statement by one of Trump's closest allies on Steve Bannon's podcast: "We will go out and find the conspirators not just in government, but in the media.  We’re going to come after you whether it’s criminally or civilly."

Although May notes that Trump tried to disavow that comment, we can put that denial in the same category as Trump's claim that he knows nothing about Project 2025.  After all, much of what is in that wish list for Trumpists is already part of the Trump canon, so it is irrelevant whether those ideas have been put into a think tank's binder that is then fully endorsed by Trump.

Similarly, Trump's anger with the moderators of Tuesday's non-debate has led him to lash out against their employer, ABC News: "To be honest, they’re a news organization. They have to be licensed to do it. They ought to take away their license for the way they did that."  In typical Trumpian fashion, one of his campaign organizations then quickly muddied the waters by sending out an email from Trump saying: "I love ABC News."  But that does nothing to change the underlying and long-term story of press intimidation, which The Independent summarized in this 2023 headline: "Lawsuits, jail threats and ‘enemy of the people’: Donald Trump’s endless war on the media."

Why would Trump -- if he were to be installed again in the White House -- not act on those threats?  Indeed, maybe the press's general timidity toward Trump is based precisely on the fear that he could in fact become President again, so they need to suck up to him now.  Does that explain it?  If so, then the people at the top of the media food chain are living in a dream world.  Trump holds grudges, and his increasingly volatile inner core of advisors is taking names, so it is difficult to imagine Trump giving anyone in the media credit for the times that they did not displease him.  And even if any particular editor or publication started out on his good side, so what?  Vladimir Putin made and unmade oligarchs, and their unmaking was often deadly.  Any journalist who thinks that they can navigate a post-democratic America and still be engaged in journalism is out to lunch.

Setting that dystopian future aside, we need to understand how those "enemies of the people" currently give Trump favorable coverage, even though they also do some things that infuriate him.  Recently, a discussion emerged among some critics regarding a media practice that has brilliantly been dubbed "sanewashing."  Margaret Sullivan, who is one of the very best voices calling for the media to wake up, has written some excellent analyses of this phenomenon in the last few weeks.  In one, she wrote this:

Here, as an example, is a Politico news alert that summarizes a recent Trump speech: “Trump laid out a sweeping vision of lower taxes, higher tariffs and light-touch regulation in a speech to top Wall Streets execs today.” As writer Thor Benson quipped on Twitter: “I hope the press is this nice to me if I ever do a speech where no one can tell if I just had a stroke or not.”

Trump has become more incoherent as he has aged, but you wouldn’t know it from most of the press coverage, which treats his utterances as essentially logical policy statements — a “sweeping vision,” even.

That Politico story was written about a speaking appearance that included Trump's bizarre, rambling answer to a question about child care costs.  Here is a mere snippet of what he said: "But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’ve talking about because the childcare is childcare, couldn’t, you know, there’s something you have to have it, in this country you have to have it.”  Yes, a sweeping vision indeed.

In another recent column, Sullivan noted that stories that clean up Trump's ramblings "run rampant in the Times, and far beyond."  She added that The Times's "politics coverage often seems broken and clueless — or even blatantly pro-Trump. There’s so much of this false-balance nonsense in the Times that there’s a Twitter (X) account devoted to mocking it ... . Sometimes, sadly, it’s hard to tell the difference between the satire and the reality."

The media does not even need to be blatantly pro-Trump to be helpful to Trump, because sanewashing is only a subspecies of normalizing the abnormal.  A recent essay from the editorial board of The Washington Post was an especially good example of the "nothing unusual here, move along" kind of coverage that Scarborough decried in the segment that I quoted at the beginning of this column.  On September 1, The Post's editors offered up "America has two presidential candidates. Let’s compare them."

And compare them they did, just as if Trump were Bob Dole or George H.W. Bush and not the guy who invokes Viktor Orban as a character reference.  Stipulating at the top that "[i]n character, style, tone, outlook, dignity, and, yes, race and gender, the two candidates are distinct," the editors then told their readers that "[t]he distinctions between them on policy substance, however, are somewhat fuzzier."

I will not bore readers with a blow-by-blow of The Post's bland rendition of the two candidates' differences, because it is all predictable.  As an aside, it is not particularly surprising that the editors could not stop themselves from bringing up the national debt, because that is what Very Serious People do, and The Post's editors are nothing if not sure of their own seriousness.  They did note that a source (a very biased source, but never mind) has said that Trump would add $5.8 trillion to gross debt over a decade while Harris would add $1.2 trillion.  A big plus for Harris?  Well ...  "Neither candidate has a plan to right the country’s escalating debt trajectory. Though on this score, Mr. Trump presents a more troubling agenda."  Scorching.

The piece ended with this: "In other words, the substantive contrasts Ms. Harris draws with Mr. Trump generally make her look better. But should Americans settle? ... Ms. Harris says she wants to elevate American politics, an imperative that Mr. Trump has again shown little interest in. She therefore has an opportunity to lift up her campaign by going deep on substance."

Was there anything missing?  The editors did not even mention January 6th, election denialism, Trump's threats to set up internment camps to deport migrants, voter intimidation, or his attacks on election workers.  Again, the essay's title is "America has two presidential candidates.  Let's compare them."  The editors manage to mention the "no tax on tips" idea but not violent, antidemocratic actions by one of the two candidates.  Some comparison.

Interestingly, The Post soon thereafter ran a guest essay penned by A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of the rival New York Times.  (Should we talk about nepo-babies?  Maybe another time.)  Although Sulzberger's piece was much more thoughtful than The Post's, he did feel the need to include this bit of obliviousness:

As someone who strongly believes in the foundational importance of journalistic independence, I have no interest in wading into politics. I disagree with those who have suggested that the risk Trump poses to the free press is so high that news organizations such as mine should cast aside neutrality and directly oppose his reelection. It is beyond shortsighted to give up journalistic independence out of fear that it might later be taken away. At The Times, we are committed to following the facts and presenting a full, fair and accurate picture of November’s election and the candidates and issues shaping it. Our democratic model asks different institutions to play different roles; this is ours.

As admirable as that would probably sound at a Journalism school convocation, what in the world is Sulzberger talking about?  He wants to stay in his comfortable lane and not directly oppose the reelection of a man who would obliterate that lane.  Sadly, even though the rest of Sulzberger's otherwise excellent essay makes it very clear that he is aware of just how big a threat Trump poses to the free press, Sulzberger simply does not see why he should do anything about it.

Why so weak?  Sulzberger says that it is "beyond shortsighted to give up journalistic independence," but that is not what anyone is asking the press to do.  People like Sullivan are asking the press not to worry about "wading into politics," in Sulzberger's words, if wading into politics means being clear about who is sane, who is a danger to democracy, and so on.   The media needs to, in NYU Professor Jay Rosen's words, focus on "not the odds, but the stakes."

When it came time for the editorial board at The Times to write its own side-by-side comparison of Harris and Trump, they came up with something that was clearly better than The Post's, but they still ignored January 6 and Trump-inspired violence more generally.  And again, Sullivan has the goods on the general tendency at The Times to treat Trump more than generously.

In an earlier era of anti-media rage, the Republicans during Ronald Reagan's presidency figured out that reporters would be grateful to be given prepared copy that they could lightly edit and then publish without much work.  Although most reporters were hard-working in many senses, the Reaganites figured out that giving even conscientious people an easy way out would pay dividends.  By the end of that decade, the press was accurately being derided for having become glorified stenographers, clumsily repackaging whatever the White House had issued and labeling it "news."

That was bad, but it was literally "accurate" in that it is true to say that "the Reagan Administration issued the following statement," followed by a cut-and-paste job.  Today is different.  The people who Sullivan and others are criticizing are no longer merely obsessed with accuracy in some narrow sense, because they have in fact become fearful of being accurate.  If they accurately describe Trump, they will be called "the liberal media," which scares them so much that they are now compliant enablers.  They are unwilling to say what is happening, because what is happening is so one-sidedly insane.  Better not to annoy the insane side of the aisle.

Perhaps the recent spate of criticism of sanewashing and other malpractice will result in a change by the political media, but I am not hopeful.

Maybe the people who make the big decisions at the major news organizations are oblivious.  Maybe they are so scared of Trump that they are preemptively bending the knee.  Maybe they are not scared because they are truly "the elites," a term that has generally been overused and degraded into meaninglessness but most definitely applies to people who cannot imagine that the consequences of even the biggest apocalypse might somehow be visited upon them and the people they spend time with.  Whatever the reason, they need to stop.