The media’s role in Donald Trump’s campaign, going forward, is fraught with peril. On their parts, and ours, not his. Already the media has been accused both of creating the elephant in the room as well as being mean and nasty to him. (This last bit comes mostly from the candidate himself.)
After Tuesday’s resounding win in the Indiana primary and the suspension of the Cruz campaign, Donald Trump has been anointed the GOP’s presumptive nominee.
To predict the future, one often has only to return to the past. In the case of Trump, his history with the media holds some intriguing clues to what we can expect from him as he marches forward. And why we should be cautious. Very cautious.
Here is Donald Trump on the media in 1987: “If you are a little different or a little outrageous … the press is going to write about you.” That statement feels eerily prophetic to me. He has taken the 29 intervening years to perfect his strategic manipulation. He has made himself readily available to the media; but the more popular he has become, the more that availability has been on his own terms. Prior to announcing his candidacy for the presidency, he accepted nearly any TV booking offered him, including cameos on popular series such as “Sex in the City.” He posed for thousands of staged pics with celebrities (remember the pic with the Clintons?) and filed a boatload of attention-drawing lawsuits.
With each move, Donald Trump seems to have added to his arsenal of moves designed to better use the media to his own advantage. During the recently ended Republican primary campaign, Trump’s aim nearly always hit its mark. Because he prefers to control any situation in which he appears in public, he refused to appear on the Sunday morning news shows but was more than willing to call in to them. The message to the reporters and pundits sitting before the TV cameras conversing with the disembodied voice on the phone? “I, The Donald, will talk and you will listen, and if you ask me a question I don’t want to answer, I will simply talk over you. And if I really don’t like the way it is going, I might just hang up, because I’m in control here.” Much easier to do on the phone than it is in person.
At his rallies, Trump insists that the media be penned into a gated area. None are allowed to wander among the crowds and/or conduct interviews, which is a common practice during the gatherings for other candidates. During his speeches at those rallies, Trump regularly points to the penned area and calls out the media present as “disgusting and horrible people.” The crowds, more often than not, turn toward the penned areas jeering, booing and throwing insults.
And it isn’t just the gated areas. Here’s a list of the news organizations that have had reporters banned from previous Trump events, presumably because the campaign didn’t like the news coverage: The Des Moines Register, Fusion, The New York Times, BuzzFeed, Politico, The Huffington Post, National Review, The Daily Beast, and Univision.
And just exactly what does this alleged fight between Trump and the media do for him? Well, there’s this: The New York Times estimates that during the primary campaign, The Donald garnered 1.9 billion with free media coverage. How does that work?
With Trump’s willingness — even eagerness — to make over-the-top comments, deliver baseless and outrageous accusations, and go on homophobic, misogynistic, and racial diatribes, he has perfected the capture of the news cycle. A former CNN journalist, Campbell Brown, said that the network message to its on-air personalities and field reporters was clear. They were to cover any event at which The Donald spoke, from beginning to end, uninterrupted. Why, you might ask? Because Donald, bawdy and blustering, catapulted their ratings through the roof. And ratings equal profit. He scratched their backs, and they scratched his. Or whatever part of his anatomy he wanted massaged at the moment. The score? Trump 1, Media 0.
Now remember, there were moments early on when Hillary Clinton had her own sparring matches with the media. Late last year, 17 journalists from national news organizations banded together and protested vociferously to the Clinton campaign about the ways in which their access to the candidate was being limited. Similar appeals have been made to the Trump campaign. The difference is that the Clinton campaign listened and made changes. The Trump folks? Not so much.
So the question is this: What will the media role be in the Trump campaign be going forward, and why does it even matter?
It matters because we — and when I say “we,” I mean all of us, the Trump supporters included — gather the majority of our information about the candidates through the mainstream media. True, Trump did have over 3 million Twitter followers the day he announced his bid for the presidency last year. Also true, he has played the Twitter card as effectively as he has played other Trump cards (sorry) when it comes to portraying himself in public. He’s mastered social media as well.
What he is attempting to do, however, is sell us the version of himself he believes will draw the largest number of voters. And to be fair, that’s what all the candidates do. The difference is that with other candidates, we can count on the media to hammer away at the public facades to find underlying inconsistencies. Does the media go overboard? Of course they do. Who really cared how much Marco Rubio sweated on stage or how long it took Secretary Clinton to get back on stage after a bathroom break? But the media is out there, peering under rocks and digging in the muck. They do that for us.
When a candidate like Trump figures out how to control the media as well as he has, the public’s access to information with which to make informed decisions is seriously jeopardized.
Is there any indication that, going forward, the media’s role in Trump’s campaign will change? I think so. As I flipped channels on the night of the Indiana primary, when Trump won and Cruz departed, I was struck by the common look I saw in the eyes of many of the pundits. I don’t think it is hyperbole to describe it as deer in the headlights. They looked stunned and sickened by the fact that they had been forced to play by Trump’s rules and that it had led to this man securing the Republican nomination for president.
My money, if I had any, would be on the media. They are smart folks. I have to believe they will figure out a way to circumvent Trump’s reach. At least I hope they do. Otherwise, the man we see will be just the man he wants us to see.
I really want the media to even the score. Trump 1, Media 1. Ties go to the electorate.
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Oh come on… what bias. Media… shmeedia… The media has been attacking Donald Trump all along… Even Fox had there day in the Sun when Rupert Murdoch wanted his golden boy Marco Rubio to be the annointed one. CNN had Van Jones going off during KKK endorsement week like Malcolm X.. George Stephanopolis stacked the deck consistently on his Sunday morning news show by using Bill Crystal to attack Trump from the Republican right wing. Zakaria GPS has tried to discredit Trump for the last 8 shows. Only CSPAN has been neutral. I will say Lou Dobbs of Fox biz news has been supportive. Also Hannity has come around as the candidates started dropping off. YES.. Trump has gotten a lot of coverage, but much of it hasn’t been friendly. The media is OWNED. The media thinks it has the power to influence this election. Well that has been proven dead wrong this time around. Pundits are a dime a dozen these days and nobody is listening as they have become commercials. So please, what the media does is a non-issue. The American public either doesn’t care what they have to say nor do they believe they are non-partisan without underlying agendas. So don’t worry about the future media response to Trump. It is irrelevant at this point.