The Press Is Giving Trump a Free Pass, Again

[Celerity]

Media outlets appear to be operating on the assumption that Trump will lose, and are covering his latest scandals accordingly.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/press-giving-trump-free-pass-again/616880



You can teach old journalists the occasional new trick, but two? Forget it. The 2016 election persuaded the press to avoid publicly presuming that Donald Trump will lose and the Democrat will win. The very cautious news coverage about Joe Biden’s chances, despite his formidable advantage in polls, makes this plain. But even though reporters are loath to say that the president is a serious underdog, they are repeating another 2016 error. Trump is getting off easy for a series of recent scandals, most likely because press outlets have concluded that he is doomed and that coverage is largely pointless. From a radical reorganization of the civil service to sketchy Chinese bank accounts, the president has faced little scrutiny on what should be major topics of concern for voters.

Four years ago, the number of scandals swirling around the Republican nominee was too great for the average reporter, much less the average voter, to track. Yet with the possible exception of the October surprise of the Access Hollywood tape, few of them gained any lasting purchase. Observers who assumed that voters would never accept Trump’s past didn’t reckon with the fact that it would get such short shrift. Meanwhile, in the closing days of the campaign, Hillary Clinton’s emails were extensively covered. In part, that was because many reporters and editors assumed that she would soon be president, and that questions about her term as secretary of state would remain relevant for months or years to come.

Instead, Clinton lost the election—the late-breaking email story may have played a large role in that—and Trump waltzed into office. (The emails quickly moved off front pages, although the president continues to try to make them a topic of conversation.) It became clear within weeks that the same questions about Trump that had been broadly overlooked during the campaign, on his shaky company, for example, and his foreign financial entanglements, would be major issues during his presidency, and indeed, they have been. In 2020, it’s clear that most of the press is trying to be careful not to count the ballots before they’re cast. That has resulted in more sophisticated horse-race coverage over the closing weeks, even in places where the race doesn’t seem to be particularly close. But as outlets focus on that coverage (as well as the coronavirus pandemic), they are giving insufficient attention to the continued flow of important news coming from the Trump administration.

Last week, for example, Trump issued an executive order that would radically reshape the federal workforce. As The Washington Post explains, the order “strips long-held civil service protections from employees whose work involves policymaking, allowing them to be dismissed with little cause or recourse, much like the political appointees who come and go with each administration.” This sounds dull, but it’s hugely consequential (and, historically, even lethal). Trump has already sought to make the executive branch his wholly owned political subsidiary, and this would extend his control. If you enjoyed the sidelining of Environmental Protection Agency scientists and the extortion of Ukraine via the State Department, you’ll love this.

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[MontanaMama]

1. Gotta have a horse race.

It is so predictable.