President Donald J. Trump has irrevocably altered the landscape of political journalism. As a Republican candidate in 2015, his loud, brash antics catapulted him to the forefront of the debate stage. In response, the media kickstarted Trumpmania–giving the former reality star airtime on any platform he wanted. When he won the 2016 presidential election, there began a reckoning. The man whose candidacy was first reported under the “Entertainment” section of The Huffington Post, was now in charge of the most powerful political office. Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent at The New York Times, warned the Columbia Journalism Review in January 2017 that, “Going into this, we shouldn’t view it as a normal White House. We shouldn’t have the expectation that everything is going to operate as business as usual. It’s going to be a very different type of climate.”
In the nearly four years since Baker’s warning, political media has sunk to its own form of tabloid journalism – flashy, gossipy stories built around Trump and his cohorts. Rather than prioritize the administration’s policy, it is Trump’s moods, tweets and press briefings dominating airways. “As the pace of the news cycle grew ever faster, the media’s ability to sustain attention on important matters wilted,” Jon Allsop and Peter Vernon wrote for the CJR. According to them, Trump’s whims “dictated the agenda for the day’s coverage.” Networks and editors remarked the reporting was necessary because Trump was the president, and objective reporting meant highlighting both, if not all, sides. However, failure to recognize that Trump is anything but a “normal” politician and shouldn’t be covered as such, is a detriment to American democracy. “Trump has ruthlessly gamed old-school journalists’ commitment to covering ‘both sides’ of the story, winning more than equal time for his lies, as well as ‘he said, she said’ fig leaves for his obscene behavior,” Allsop and Vernon wrote.
As Trump prepares to leave the Oval Office, political news media is rebranding and rebuilding itself. Trump’s legacy is undeniable, and the change to reality-based journalism will take time. Trumpmania is still accessible on “Fox News,” “Newsmax” and “One America News Network,” but networks and editors are pivoting sharply. The in-your-face, minimal accountability journalism that became a fixture of Trump’s presidential tenure is out. Live fact checking, cutting away from press briefings and calling out the president’s lies and racist rhetoric by name are in. Reporters like NBC’s Hallie Jackson and ABC’s Jonathan Karl and Mary Bruce are among those who are building back public trust. With each report, they challenge the idea that objectivity means enabling racist systems and practices. As Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein wrote for The Washington Post, “A balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality. If the political dynamics of Washington are unlikely to change anytime soon, at least we should change the way that reality is portrayed to the public.”
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