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The real reason the media is rising up against Donald Trump

  

Category:  News & Politics

Via:  bob-nelson  •  9 years ago  •  25 comments

The real reason the media is rising up against Donald Trump

The real reason the media is rising up against Donald Trump    by David Roberts , Vox
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"I've lied this many times since I started this speech..." (Photo by Ty Wright/Getty Images)

   Something new and morbidly interesting is happening in US politics and media, but no one can agree on exactly how to characterize it. Superficially, it is about the  lies told by Donald Trump , but it's about much more than that, as well.

As Jay Rosen documents in a  recent post , the Beltway political media has recently become alarmed by Donald Trump's lies. The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza, to whom "nothing is shocking anymore,"  says  there used to be "a line that wasn't crossed in years past, a sort of even-partisans-can-agree-on-this standard," but Trump has crossed it. NBC's First Read, the blog of  Meet the Press says  Trump has taken lying "to a level we haven't seen before in American politics." The  Post  and  New York Times editorial boards have both publicly wrung hands. Our own Dylan Matthews  wrote recently  about how Trump's lying has flummoxed the media.

As everyone acknowledges, politicians have always lied. So what's going on here? How are Trump's lies different? Are they just more voluminous, more flagrant? Or is there something deeper going on that has unsettled the media establishment?

That was foreshadowing! Because, yes, I think there is something more going on.

Trump has gone from an entertaining player to someone who threatens the game


Media outlets aren't quite panicking yet. They thought they had a good handle on Trump when he emerged — just another Herman Cain, a conservative newcomer who would briefly capture the attention of early primary voters until they, under the guiding hand of party elders, "got serious" and chose an electable moderate like John McCain or Mitt Romney.

This is a model with which political analysts are extremely familiar. Many  still think it fits , that Trump will flame out and the establishment will rally around an alternative.

Maybe so. But Trump's dominance has gone on longer than anyone predicted, and it is making all kinds of people nervous, including the establishment media — the Sunday shows, horse race pundits, and Villagers who have become such an integral part of the Beltway political class.

Their trepidation has less to do with the fact of Trump lying than with the  way  he lies. They don't mind being properly lied to; it's all part of the game. What they cannot countenance is being rendered irrelevant. Trump is not kissing the ring. He barely bothers to spin the media. He does not need them, or give two shits what centrist pundits think. Their disapproval only strengthens him. Media gatekeepers are in danger of being exposed as impotent bystanders.

The US conservative movement's truthiness predates Trump


It's a mistake to see Trump as de novo. The term is  all over the place  now, but I wrote my first column about  "post-truth politics"  back in 2010 (see follow-ups  here  and here ). Conservatives have been bending the truth for many years now. Romney and Ryan  lied like crazy  in the 2012 campaign. Republicans in Congress have been telling outrageous lies about Obama for almost eight years, everything from his secret Muslim-hood to Agenda 21 to his plan to confiscate guns and to institute Sharia law.

Remember Sarah Palin and death panels? Swift Vets going after Kerry? Bush and Cheney and weapons of mass destruction? Clinton having Vince Foster shot? Oh, and climate change being a coordinated global hoax? The increasing radicalization and insularity of the conservative movement over the past several decades has made it, in Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann's words , "unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science."

Of course, all politicians bend the truth, and Democrats do it too. But the parties are not symmetrical  in this regard. There is simply nothing on the left like the phenomenon of numerous elected politicians and a  third of Republicans  believing that Obama is training troops in Jade Helm for a coup. That is wackadoodle,  Alex Jones –level stuff, and it is  routine  on the right. The other day Ted Cruz  speculated , based on a clerical error hyped by a far-right blog, that the Planned Parenthood shooter is a "transgendered leftist activist." It was wildly irresponsible, but it barely qualified as the most outrageous howler of the day.

Donald Trump's nonsense is not appreciably more nonsensical than much of what circulates in right-wing media every day, the same right-wing media Beltway reporters have been treating with kid gloves for years. Why do his lies rankle so?

The media's power to penalize politicians for lying has declined precipitously


Politicians have always lied. But in the days when there were fewer media outlets and their power was more consolidated, politicians' ability to lie was at least somewhat shaped and tempered by the media. Certain kinds of lies have always mattered more than others, but it wasn't a free-for-all; there was a pretense of commonly shared facts and values, even if it was often honored in the breach. Media at least posed some threat  to a lying politician, as established by such mythologized episodes as Edward R. Murrow repudiating Joseph McCarthy and the Washington Post exposing Watergate.

What's happened from (roughly) Gingrich forward is that the right has used coordinated institutional power and the explosion of new communications technology to sap the media's power to do damage.

This has been done in two ways. First is the unceasing attack on "liberal media bias," which has left journalists terrified of passing judgment on any matter of controversy. And second is the development of a parallel intellectual infrastructure, a network of partisan think tanks, advocacy organizations, and media outlets that provide a kind of full-spectrum alternative to the mainstream. (See  here  for more on how right-wing media dragged the party right.)

The establishment media has largely proven feckless in the face of this assault, clinging to the view-from-nowhere model even as an unabashed arm of the GOP became the highest-rated "news network." Now there are so many outlets, so many voices, that the old guard has very little control over the narrative. They have less and less power to penalize a politician for lying even if they want to; there's always another outlet with a more congenial perspective.

Even as its power erodes, though, the rituals and habits of insider political media remain, a kind of polite fiction, one that politicians pay respect to by participating. There has been a kind of fragile detente. A certain style of lying has become more or less acceptable, as long as it follows unspoken rules.

Trump breaks the rules of political lying


Trump represents, or could represent, the end of that detente. He breaks the rules of political lying:

1) Lies about policy are fine; lies about trivial, personal, or easily verifiable claims are not.


The media has been cowed from making any judgments about policy, which is why Jeb Bush can claim he'll  create 4 percent growth by fiat  and not become a laughingstock. Every   Republican   candidate  who has put out a tax plan has relied on a whole series of fantastical judgments about the ability of regressive tax cuts to spur economic growth, but Chuck Todd hasn't denounced them as liars.

But when a politician lies about little things, personal experiences and anecdotes, the media pounces. This was notoriously on display during Al Gore's 1999 presidential campaign, during which reporters uncovered (or in many cases, fabricated) endless misstatements or contradictions about trivial particulars. When Hillary Clinton said she once landed in Bosnia "under fire," the media went  nuts . They went nuts about the details of Kerry's war record. They're going nuts now about Ben Carson's  biographical anecdotes . Exposing (or hyping) stuff like this is what the media now views as "tough."

Trump is lying about policy, of course, but he's also telling a whole string of smaller lies that are easy to refute. He knows they're easy to refute, he knows they've been refuted, and he just keeps repeating them. There's the  nonsense about seeing Muslims cheering 9/11 . There's  ISIS building a luxury hotel in Syria . There's his campaign  being self-funded . There's  300,000 veterans dying  while waiting for medical care. It's endless; Kevin Drum has a list of  26 and counting .

These are the kinds of random, specific lies the establishment punditry feels empowered to call out. And they  have  called them out. But neither Trump nor his followers care. The emperor has no clothes.

2) Lies are fine as long as an "other side" is provided.


As long as both sides have their claims and counterclaims, studies and counterstudies, experts and counterexperts, the objective media knows its role. Quote this one, quote that one, opinions differ, done.

This is the part played by the conservative network of think tanks and media outlets — to provide a "side" to back any conservative claim, so there are always two. That way, the media feels safe sticking to "he said, she said." It's a comfy arrangement.

But Trump is a free agent. He's not tapped into that network and doesn't seem to need it. He feels no obligation at all to supply the media with institutional support that might legitimize his positions. He rarely mentions studies or experts, other than occasionally name-dropping  Carl Icahn . He rarely mounts anything that could even be characterized as an argument. He simply asserts.

By doing this, he disrupts the arrangement. He doesn't offer journalists any cover for their refusal to make a judgment. He calls their bluff, forcing them to be with him or against him.

3) Nine lies are fine as long as the 10th is retracted.


Every so often, when a politician goes overboard and makes an obviously, verifiably false claim about a matter of recorded fact, the media will browbeat him or her into retracting it and apologizing. (Even Carly Fiorina is still subject to this; she  retracted  a claim  she made in the debate after some outraged media fact-checking.)

An occasional victory like this on some trivial matter validates the media's role. More to the point, it affirms that the politician in question  respects  the media's role, that it still matters  if the media unites in protest to a particular claim. Given this occasional prize, the high-profile campaign journalists of the world will let more complex and consequential falsehoods fly under the radar.

But Trump does not back down, retract, or apologize, ever, not even for the most trivial thing. He refuses to allow journalists and pundits to validate their watchdog role. He recognizes that capitulating to the mainstream media is far worse for any conservative than clinging to a lie. (Fiorina, for instance, was pilloried for backing down.) They have no power over him at all, and now everyone knows it.

Trump is revealing that the referees are irrelevant

All this rule breaking has the same effect: It disrupts the game as the media is used to playing it. It steps all over the unspoken agreements among various sectors of the political class in DC. It threatens the gatekeeper media, the VSPs, with something far worse than being wrong or biased. It threatens them with being irrelevant. Trump doesn't need or respect them, and they can't touch him. They can only point and gawk.

But it's wrong to view this as a result of Trump's idiosyncrasies. He's just an opportunist who was in the right place at the right time, taking advantage of a faction of the electorate that has been primed to respond to someone like him.

Republican billionaires and political operators have spent decades building a  self-contained epistemic bubble  in which they could pump up the right-wing base with fear and paranoia. Now the Frankenstein's monster has lumbered off the table and crashed into the cocktail party. It no longer heeds the GOP establishment, and it utterly disdains the media. All Trump does is give it voice. He is what happens when conservatives stop being polite and start getting real.

For now, the political class is on tenterhooks, waiting with nervous anticipation to see whether the familiar order will reassert itself, whether Trump will fade and be replaced by someone with more respect for the way the game is played in DC.

And maybe that will happen — maybe this has all been a disturbance in the force that will calm itself before 2016 — but the social and demographic trends driving the Trump phenomenon are far deeper than Trump himself. They will outlast him.

There is a faction of the US electorate that is positively wroth: angry that they are losing their country, angry at immigrants and minorities who want "free stuff," angry at terrorists for making them feel afraid, angry at liberals for rejecting good Christian values, angry at the economy for screwing them and denying them the better life they were promised, angry about Solyndra and Benghazi and Obamaphones and Sharia law and ACORN and Planned Parenthood and black-on-black crime and a government takeover of health care and Agenda 21 and Syrian immigrants on the loose and UN climate hoaxes. They are angry at all institutions, including the Republican Party and the media, that have failed to halt America's decline.

They are mostly white, mostly older, and entirely pissed off. And Trump speaks for them, less in what he says than in his total contempt for those same institutions.

The anger is understandable, even justifiable in many ways, but unfortunately it also involves believing lots of nonsense. And no amount of understanding and empathy can make Jade Helm anything but, factually speaking, nonsense.

Thus the dilemma. The old-guard political media has always seen itself as a disinterested referee. But what they confront now is aggressive, unapologetic nonsense, piped up from a nationalist, ethnocentric, revanchist conservative base through the mouth of one Donald J. Trump. He is forcing them to choose sides, to accept his bare assertions and make a mockery of their purported allegiance to accuracy ... or to call him out and, in the eyes of his supporters, formally align against him.

The conceptual space for neutrality has all but disappeared. Media outlets are being forced to take sides, and facing the grim possibility that even if they do, they have no power to affect the outcome. Their twin idols — objectivity and influence — are being exposed as illusions. That's what has them so anxious about Donald Trump.

 


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Bob Nelson
Professor Guide
link   seeder  Bob Nelson    9 years ago

(I apologize for the ugly formatting - I'm using an android tablet. You might prefer the original article. Just click on the title/link.

I doubt that I'm alone in being disgusted with the passive attitude of the media -- for many years already -- facing the massive lying from politicians. 

This seed explains why the media is as it is, and why Trump is upsetting the apple cart. 

Thought provoking. 

 
 
 
A. Macarthur
Professor Guide
link   A. Macarthur    9 years ago

Trump is the Republican Party's Frankenstein Monster; he says aloud and without equivocation, all the hateful, xenophobic, misogynistic, racist and other ugliness that Republicans have been promoting with a wink, a nod and, in the shadows to a zeal-without-knowledge base of willing dupe/dopes.

"Be careful what you wish for" has come home to roost.

 

 

 
 
 
Bob Nelson
Professor Guide
link   seeder  Bob Nelson  replied to  A. Macarthur   9 years ago

True. But that's not the point, here. 

Candidates have been lying -- producing whoppers -- for many years. The media have been passive. But lately, they have tried (without much success) to go after Trump. 

Why? Why is the media tackling Trump, after letting all his predecessors spout total nonsense? 

 
 
 
Perrie Halpern R.A.
Professor Principal
link   Perrie Halpern R.A.  replied to  Bob Nelson   9 years ago

 all the hateful, xenophobic, misogynistic, racist and other ugliness that Republicans have been promoting with a wink, a nod and, in the shadows to a zeal-without-knowledge base of willing dupe/dopes.

Mac and jwc,

I'm gonna disagree with you here. He is none of those things (well maybe xenophobic, but I am not even sure about that). Within the Trump Business world, he has every minority group and woman represented in upper positions. But you see you bought it, and in that lies why the media is so useless when dealing with him. He honed his skills in controlling the media and invented a persona during his years doing "The Apprentice". He tested how far he could push it with the media long before his decision to run.. and found out, pretty damn far, if he just disregarded anything they had to say. He is the ultimate P T Barnum and is well aware that there is a sucker born every minute... in fact, he is counting on it. 

So how can the media matter? All he has to do is posture, wave his arms wildly about, and talk very loud and presto chango, the media is irrelevant, and the worst part of this, is that they, the media are all aware of it, the GOP is aware of it, and since he has this particular set of skills (remember he will hunt you down and he will kill you), there is nothing they can do for about it. He has found his suckers and that is all he needs to succeed, and so the media has been rendered nurtured. And who wants to admit that they are now ballless. 

 
 
 
JohnRussell
Professor Principal
link   JohnRussell  replied to  Perrie Halpern R.A.   9 years ago

Perrie, Trump is completely unqualified to be president. He has admitted on more than one occasion that he gets his information about national and world issues from television shows. He doesn't mention reading any other material that might go into issues in depth. 

He is running for president, I believe, because it was on his "bucket list". He is turning 70 years old soon and it was now or never. He has been threatening to run for 25 years or so. I don't believe Trump thought, or knew, that his campaign would catch fire the way it did. He blowhards his way through it because it is working for him and because there is nothing else he can do. He literally cannot talk about the issues in the slightest depth because he doesn't know anything about them. 

 
 
 
Perrie Halpern R.A.
Professor Principal
link   Perrie Halpern R.A.  replied to  JohnRussell   9 years ago

John,

You are missing the point that Bob is trying to make. It isn't about whether or not Trump is qualified to run, it's about how the media is treating him. That is what I am addressing. 

 
 
 
JohnRussell
Professor Principal
link   JohnRussell  replied to  Perrie Halpern R.A.   9 years ago

I think why Trump is running for president has a lot to do with it. He is a big celebrity, and the media always kowtows to celebrity. They haven't challenged him because they can't bear the thought that he would "boycott" their channel or newspaper or website. 

I don't think Trump's campaign was ever intended to succeed. He just stuck his toe in the water and found out to his surprise that the water was warm. The media never adjusted to him because he was bringing them ratings. 

 
 
 
Perrie Halpern R.A.
Professor Principal
link   Perrie Halpern R.A.  replied to  JohnRussell   9 years ago

I have to disagree with you, John. He has been mulling this over for quite some time and I think he is playing to win, but he is playing Trump style, which is with showmanship. This guy wrote "The Art of the Deal" as he knew his corporation was going into bankruptcy. And while most people would never try to write another book after something that embarrassing, he went on to write, "The art of the comeback" and "How to stay on top" He isn't limited by his own failings and that is a trick that very few of us have.

 
 
 
JohnRussell
Professor Principal
link   JohnRussell  replied to  Perrie Halpern R.A.   9 years ago

I don't think this is worth a big argument, but , Trump knows he is not qualified to be president, or he is mentally ill. 

I really believe his age played a major part in him wanting to run this time. he's 70 years old this month I believe. Next time he'll be 74, and that age is a factor in who people want as President. 

He is unqualified, he knows it, so what does he do ? , he just attacks everyone and speaks in broad brush 'solutions' that appeal to the lowest common denominator. He could not have known that such a tactic would work. He took a shot in the dark and it has worked for him so far. 

I respect your differing view though, even if I am not sure we have a big disagreement. 

 
 
 
JohnRussell
Professor Principal
link   JohnRussell  replied to  JohnRussell   9 years ago

I stand corrected. He will be 70 in June.

 
 
 
Randy
Sophomore Participates
link   Randy  replied to  Perrie Halpern R.A.   9 years ago

The media has been treating him with kid gloves. However the gloves are starting to come off and he is being called the lying asshole that he is. Please nominate him!

 
 
 
96WS6
Junior Quiet
link   96WS6  replied to  JohnRussell   9 years ago

"Perrie, Trump is completely unqualified to be president. He has admitted on more than one occasion that he gets his information about national and world issues from television shows."

 

Once again you have described BO perfectly, and once again, the irony escapes you.

 
 
 
Randy
Sophomore Participates
link   Randy  replied to  A. Macarthur   9 years ago

Trump is the right wing of the GOP given voice. Hateful, lying, racist and he is saying what they want to hear, because the bulk of the far right wing of the GOP is also hateful, lying and racist. The GOP is in a death spiral and nominating him will stick another knife in them. Please nominate him and let's put the far right wing out of everyone's misery.

 
 
 
JohnRussell
Professor Principal
link   JohnRussell    9 years ago

It's a good article, but I don't think the situation is so complicated.

The right wing base is beside itself because the Republicans in Congress kept promising them that the "usurper" in the White House was about to get his, but they were never able to deliver to the base's satisfaction (treason charges, impeachment, run out of town, tarred and feathered, firing squad), and the base has lost patience, knowing Obama is going to get off "scot free". Now the base is taking it out on the establishment GOP. What Trump says or doesn't say is not as meaningful as his taking it to the conservative "establishment". In other words, the base doesn't care if he lies 50 times a day. They want an anti-Obama (and Clinton) and they want it NOW. 

Right wing media fueled almost all of this. 

 
 
 
Dean Moriarty
Professor Quiet
link   Dean Moriarty  replied to  JohnRussell   9 years ago
Even if he doesn't win he's a real firecracker energizing the party. All eyes are on the Republicans this time Hillary is about as exciting as watching golf. She's a real snooze fest not likely to get those lazy liberals up and off the couch to vote.
 
 
 
Bob Nelson
Professor Guide
link   seeder  Bob Nelson  replied to  JohnRussell   9 years ago

I agree with what you say, John ... but that isn't the subject. 

The article is about the media, and not just the wingnut echo chamber. 

 
 
 
Petey Coober
Freshman Silent
link   Petey Coober  replied to  JohnRussell   9 years ago

Right wing media fueled almost all of this.

Actually dissatisfaction with party politics fueled this . Hillary represents business as usual as do a lot of the GOP . Trump does not . He will do anything to break the mold , some of it dangerous .

 
 
 
Sean Treacy
Professor Principal
link   Sean Treacy    9 years ago

What Trump has done is copy the model that the Clintons have perfected over 20 plus years. You just lie, stand behind your lie, stonewall any investigation and then claim it's old news.  As the Clintons have demonstrated, there's no downside to telling the most improbable lies, as long you don't back down. 

Look at Hillary. She was identified as a congenital liar by the New York Times way back in the mid 90s  and only gained power as she has gotten away with lie after lie.  Despite decades of lies, an entire party is so in thrall to her that it couldn't find a single viable candidate to run against her. 

The only difference is the media doesn't support Trump, so now it's flummoxed by lying. It's spent the last 20 years supporting a similar liar, so it doesn't know what to do. 

 
 
 
Perrie Halpern R.A.
Professor Principal
link   Perrie Halpern R.A.  replied to  Sean Treacy   9 years ago

Sean,

Clearly you have missed the fact that all politicians lie. Hillary didn't invent something new. She didn't even perfect it. I know democrats who don't even like her, which is probably her biggest pitfall. She has about a 4.5 on the likability scale. But she is playing the game with the media in a why that has been traditionally played. Trump changed the playing field, and that is why he stays on top, while other Republicans fight to get numbers. He is a showman first, with no substance, and those who like him are missing his slight of hand. As for the media, how can you be effective to a person who doesn't give a damn? Trump found out that he can do that, and that is what he IS doing. 

 
 
 
Sean Treacy
Professor Principal
link   Sean Treacy  replied to  Perrie Halpern R.A.   9 years ago

Clearly you have missed the fact that all politicians lie. 

No. My point assumes that as true and moves on to how the Clintons changed the dyanamics of lying and turned being caught lying into a political asset. As Trump has realized, there are no consequences to lying now. As the Clinton playbook show, as long as the politician double down on the lie they were caught telling and refuses to admit being wrong, his or her  "side" will rally to defend them. 

That's what changed with the Clintons. Getting attacked for lying essentially sealed the Clintons' relationship with their base, and that relationship continues to this day. Trump is simply following the same game plan. Every time he's attacked for lying his support grows among his base, just like every time Clinton gets caught in a lie, Democrats rally around her. 

 
 
 
Perrie Halpern R.A.
Professor Principal
link   Perrie Halpern R.A.  replied to  Sean Treacy   9 years ago

No. My point assumes that as true and moves on to how the Clintons changed the dyanamics of lying and turned being caught lying into a political asset.

You try to blame way too much on the Clintons and I won't get into a partisan discussion to counter it with lies told by Republicans. As an independent, I have long been sick of the lying that comes out of both of the parties. The fact is they all lie and the Clintons are not the paradigm. Trump is a force of his own. He is playing for a certain audience and when he doubles down, they love it. And part of that is not caring about the media.  

 

 
 

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