Time for US media to call out Donald Trump for what he is
Opinion
US broadcasters and press have been slow to highlight the former president’s failings, from his ramblings to inaccurate statements. It’s not too late to take a radical approach ahead of November’s election.
By now, you will know whether Donald Trump managed to stick to his policy script in the presidential TV debate (unlikely) and whether Kamala Harris managed to appear not too clever or judgemental (probably).
With an estimated 50m Americans watching, the longer-term impact of the debate could hardly be more important for November’s election.
Whatever the impact on voting intentions, there are questions to be asked about the performance of the US media, both television and newspapers, in this most extraordinary campaign.
Of course, it was the US TV networks that must bear the greatest responsibility for creating the Trump phenomenon in the first place by placing box office and entertainment value ahead of journalism and social responsibility.
And it was the media that brought down Joe Biden as a viable presidential candidate for a second term, as TV highlighted his declining powers — something endlessly emphasised by the press.
It is perfectly reasonable to argue that, in the case of Biden, the media did a necessary job in exposing the frailties of someone who would have been approaching 86 at the end of a second term.
Deteriorating performance
What is not at all reasonable, and indeed amounts to a scandal, is that, until very recently, Trump has not been subjected to the same treatment on the issue of age and growing incapacity.
Never mind the 34 felony convictions, the finding on rape and the queue of prosecutors who can’t wait to get their man into court on everything from vote-rigging to trying to overturn a valid presidential election result — Trump is being treated as a normal candidate who deserves an impartial hearing.
When he rambles and talks incomprehensible nonsense, journalists from papers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post have been turning his gibberish into passable sentences, almost as if they are copywriters on his team rather than pointing out his inadequacies.
Trump sometimes thinks he is still fighting Biden — the sort of mistake that leads to the current president being eviscerated by the media — and barely a word is said.
NYT, which carried multiple articles about how Biden was far too old and frail for a second term, has until this week been virtually silent about how Trump’s performances are deteriorating before our eyes.
Even the former president’s niece, Mary Lea Trump, a psychologist, has talked about clear signs of dementia.
On Monday, NYT published a substantial piece on the current state of Trump’s mind, according to those who keep a close watch on such things — the first of its kind. At long last, NYT said it is now Trump who is facing questions “about age and capacity and rambling and sometimes incoherent public statements”.
Has the paper realised just now?
Normalisation of the abnormal
The main crime of the US media has been to “normalise” something that is in no way normal.
Any one of a dozen public statements made in the past few weeks should have been enough to disqualify him from serious consideration to be the next US president.
There has been the threat to impose long jail sentences on electoral officials “who cheated”, presumably for the “crime” of allowing the electorate to come up with the “wrong” answer.
Praise to the Orlando Sentinel, in the heart of Florida’s Trumpland, for drawing attention to such a crazy, illegal policy. Many in the media haven’t bothered.
Trump has also been boasting of plans to round up and deport millions of people who might not have the right documentation, however long they have lived in the US. He warned it would be “a bloody affair”. If there was an outcry about such language, and such plans, in the US media, it has not made it across the Atlantic.
Media’s logical flaw
Some US broadcasters have begun live-fact-checking Trump, although that is a daunting task because the lies and misleading statements are issued in industrial quantities.
Frequent Trump statements about imposing tariffs on imports are a case in point.
The would-be oldest president in US history insists, echoed by his running mate JD Vance, that the countries on the receiving end would pay the tariffs and it would cost US consumers nothing.
Actually, no. The tariffs are imposed on the US public, who has to accept the higher prices that result — and, of course, it usually gets worse than that because counter-tariffs are then imposed and that in turn affects US exports.
These simple facts were explained by CNN, but it is not clear that too many other sections of the media have bothered to do so.
The logical flaw that underlines disgraceful inaction by much of the media is the otherwise admirable tradition in US journalism to treat both sides in a presidential election equally and with respect.
Such an approach is wholly unsuitable for someone who seems determined to overthrow both US democracy and the Constitution that underpins it.
Even after the events at the Capitol on 6 January 2021, the former president has repeatedly made it clear that all his supporters would have to do is vote this time and they would never have to vote again. Presumably because they would not have the opportunity to do so.
Overwhelming evidence
Apologists say that is just Trump being Trump — and, by implication, that he doesn’t really mean it.
It would be wise to assume he means what he says.
By now, the evidence is so overwhelming that it is time for every media outlet in the country to call out Trump for what he is — someone not fit to run any democracy anywhere, least of all the US.
If some of their readers and listeners are upset by the truth, so be it.
Naturally, the Daily Mail has its own approach to the Trump/Harris battle.
On Monday, under the headline “Is Calamity Kamala fit to lead the free world?”, Harris biographer Charlie Spiering described her as “a politician of loquacious mediocrity”. Spiering fears the prospect of “this individual becoming president is all too likely — and terrifying”.
What the Harris biographer, and presumably the Daily Mail, do not say is: compared to what?
Raymond Snoddy is a media consultant, national newspaper columnist and former presenter of NewsWatch on BBC News. He writes for The Media Leader on Wednesdays — read his column here.