Good morning! Yesterday we wrote about some of the questions for the media world in the wake of Trump's reelection. Now we're going to start offering some tentative answers... |
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How will the incoming Trump administration approach the American news media? There are a wide range of possibilities, and I don't think it's wise to assume anything. But it is wise to think through the scenarios.
That's why I re-read New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger's "playbook" essay this morning. Over the summer, Sulzberger examined how strongmen have undercut independent journalism around the world. He wrote that the playbook generally has five predictable parts. This is how he opened the essay:
"After several years out of power, the former leader is returned to office on a populist platform. He blames the news media’s coverage of his previous government for costing him reelection. As he sees it, tolerating the independent press, with its focus on truth-telling and accountability, weakened his ability to steer public opinion. This time, he resolves not to make the same mistake. His country is a democracy, so he can't simply close newspapers or imprison journalists. Instead, he sets about undermining independent news organizations in subtler ways — using bureaucratic tools such as tax law, broadcast licensing and government contracting. Meanwhile, he rewards news outlets that toe the party line — shoring them up with state advertising revenue, tax exemptions and other government subsidies — and helps friendly businesspeople buy up other weakened news outlets at cut rates to turn them into government mouthpieces."
"Within a few years, only pockets of independence remain in the country's news media, freeing the leader from perhaps the most challenging obstacle to his increasingly authoritarian rule," Sulzberger wrote. "Instead, the nightly news and broadsheet headlines unskeptically parrot his claims, often unmoored from the truth, flattering his accomplishments while demonizing and discrediting his critics."
"This," he wrote, "is the short version of how Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, effectively dismantled the news media in his country." He said "it is a story that is being repeated in eroding democracies all around the world."
You might say it can't happen here. But it's worth re-reading the essay today now that Trump's reelection has come to pass. Here's the link...
>> Related: What do the proposals in the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 document mean for the media? NiemanLab's Joshua Benton did a deep dive into that yesterday. Among the proposals: "Make it easier to seize journalists’ emails and phone records." "Consider booting reporters out of the White House." "Punish former officials who speak to reporters."
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'Dangerous moment' for media |
Liam Reilly writes: Press freedom groups are sounding the alarm on the potential dangers facing journalists under a second Trump administration. "His election to a second term in office marks a dangerous moment for American journalism and global press freedom," Reporters Without Borders said. Here are some of the other specific concerns...
>> Former ProPublica president Dick Tofel's assessment: "We must again be at work, but also preparing for war if Trump chooses that."
>> Trump's decisive victory "will cause media outlets — particularly those that fashioned themselves as nonpartisan — to rethink their strategies," THR's Alex Weprin writes in a new story this morning.
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Disinformation machine at work |
It's a mistake to dismiss real dissatisfaction with the economy and the government as merely a product of right-wing propaganda. But it's also a mistake to ignore the mis- and disinformation that permeates pro-Trump media from top to bottom.
One media exec I know put it this way: "If the RNC announced tomorrow that its primary strategy going forward would be to put $100 billion into a disinformation machine designed to convince people they live in a fictitious hellscape of airliners falling out of the sky because of DEI, we would cover the operations of that disinformation machine on an everyday basis as the biggest political story in America. That machine exists. It's called right-wing media."
There are multiple ways to measure the impact. Last month, Ipsos pollsters asked respondents factual questions and compared the answers to ballot choices. People who answered questions about inflation, crime, and immigration incorrectly were "more likely to opt for Trump," Ipsos said, while those who answered correctly preferred VP Kamala Harris.
None of this is meant to diminish voters' feelings about issues. But as Ipsos observed last month, "the end result is that Americans feel that crime, immigration, and the economy are all worse than they actually are. This will affect the election." Fact-check: True!
>> By the way, influential pro-Trump figures often claim that "facts" about, say, crime levels are skewed by crooked government agencies. This speaks to the enormous trust deficit in institutions. Soon, however, Trump will be back in charge of those agencies...
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'Living in two different worlds' |
It's conventional wisdom at this point that Trump and Harris voters exist in different realities. But I'm always grateful for new first-person accounts, so here's one. On Wednesday Sharon Quinsaat, a sociologist at Grinnell College, wrote about her fieldwork with Trump supporters in Hawaii. "Their sources of information are nothing we have never heard of," Quinsaat wrote. "Yes, there is still that staple of Fox News and Newsmax. There's also a lot reading Epoch Times, One America News, and Rumble. But I had a deep conversation with a Native Hawaiian (let's call her Lily) who regards Trump as a demi-god. She showed me on her phone the stuff she reads and listens to everyday. I have never heard of them before, but we listened to them together. The conspiracy theories in these sites are WILD, to say the least. But she is convinced they are true." She concluded: "Lily and I are living in two different worlds."
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Here's the Thursday front page of the VP's hometown paper, the San Francisco Chronicle, with a photo of her walking off stage after her concession speech... |
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'A new era for campaigning online' |
"This election revealed a sea change in American media," Cenk Uygur asserted. "Politicians who went on mainstream media used to have a huge advantage. But this time Trump's appearances on online shows overpowered Harris's MSM advantage. Her not doing online media proved to be an enormous mistake."
WIRED reporter Makena Kelly is out with a new story all about this. To "drive up the margins with medium and low propensity male voters," the Trump campaign "took Trump away from the television cameras and in front of podcast mics, setting a new standard for how to run a campaign online," she writes. She quotes campaign adviser Alex Bruesewitz saying "the corporate media, a lot of the mainstream media, don't know how to talk to men anymore. I think that's a big issue. The messaging that comes out through the mainstream media doesn't resonate well with the average American man. And so a lot of them find their news through less traditional means."
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Bracing for a 'Trump dump' |
I'm sure someone else has already coined this phrase, but instead of a "Trump bump" of viewers and subscribers, media outlets are bracing for a "Trump dump."
Television news ratings on election night, while still high, were down markedly from 2020, as Sara Fischer noted for Axios here. Some of the declines were offset by streaming and digital growth, but the ratings data may also hint at some exhaustion among American news consumers. Ben Mullin mentioned "news fatigue" in his new NYT story about Trump 2.0 and the media. Digiday has more about what Trump's return means for media and advertising here...
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Will there be a journalistic brain drain in DC? A talent agent said what I've also heard anecdotally: A lot of reporters are "questioning if they have it in them to report on another Trump cycle."
On a semi-related note, some of the same far-right extremists emboldened by Trump's first term in office "are celebrating his win with violent memes and threats," WIRED's Tess Owen reports. If you're a journalist, and you're seeing some of these messages in your inbox or your social media mentions, just know you're not alone. I block every troll who says I should be in "Gitmo" (a popular taunt) or any other jail...
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Covering faith in all forms |
I strongly agree with this comment that Texas Tribune reporter Robert Downen made on X overnight. Trump takes office in 74 days, he wrote, and "if you haven't started scouting for a good religion reporter yet, then you're already behind on one of the biggest stories of the next decade."
Last night I led a post-election panel discussion at the Media Law Resource Center's annual gala in NYC, and I was struck by panelist Tim O'Brien's first comment about Trump's victory. He said Trump's relationship with his base is religious in nature. In some cases he is a replacement for organized religion. It's a matter of faith...
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"You're going to be more relevant than ever," Jim Cramer quipped to David Faber on CNBC yesterday. Yes, Faber acknowledged, "my old beat of M&A is most likely going to get quite busy." He praised the prospect of transactions involving Charter, Comcast, and CNN's parent Warner Bros. Discovery, to name a few. "You can go down a lot of roads," he said. Variety's Todd Spangler wrote about some of them here...
>> Related: "Trump is expected to continue cases against Big Tech, several of which began in his first term, but his recent skepticism about a potential Google breakup highlights the power he will hold over how those cases are run,"
Jody Godoy wrote for Reuters.
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Tech leaders lined up to congratulate Trump on Wednesday, raising eyebrows in some instances. Jeff Bezos's tweet caused some moans and groans inside the Washington Post since he blocked the publication from endorsing Harris in a possible attempt to appeal to Trump. "The tweet drew thousands upon thousands of responses, most of them slamming Bezos," Poynter's Tom Jones noted this morning...
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>> View from the right: "Media must accept MAGA and stop condemning Christians, patriots," Cheryl K. Chumley wrote for the Washington Times.
>> In a post-election memo, The New York Times urged its newsroom "to be open-minded, fair, and ‘unflinching’ in its coverage," Business Insider's Lucia Moses reported.
>> Election deniers are "in a real cognitive pickle by an election that went their way," NBC's Brandy Zadrozny pointed out.
>> Did betting markets like Polymarket reflect reality "faster and better than opinion polls?" The NYT's Michael J. de la Merced said it seems that way.
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Stephen Colbert opened Wednesday's "Late Show" in an unusual fashion, sitting at his desk and candidly addressing his audience's shock and concern. Then came his standup routine. "As a late night host, people often say to me, 'Come on, part of you has got to want Trump to win, because he gives you so much material to work with.' No, no," Colbert said. "No one tells the guy who cleans the bathroom, 'Wow, you must love it when someone has explosive diarrhea. There's so much material to work with!'"
>> Other Hollywood reactions: Stars like Billie Eilish, Jack White, and Cardi B have spoken out, with Eilish calling Trump's victory "a war on women." (Rolling Stone)
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>> Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN's parent company, added 7.2 million Max subscribers after international launches, the streamer's largest single-quarter jump. Shares jumped in premarket trading. (CNBC)
>> The Supreme Court considered "a bid from Facebook to block a shareholder lawsuit over the Cambridge Analytica data scandal from moving forward." (The Hill)
>> "Millions of stories published by sites including The New York Times and The New York Daily News have been found in three weeks of searching OpenAI’s training dataset." (Press Gazette)
>> The incoming Los Angeles County district attorney told CNN "he could ask to delay a hearing to have Erik and Lyle Menendez resentenced." (CNN)
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