Canadian journalists who covered Rob Ford offer tips on Trump

Americans would agree the US has never seen a politician quite like Donald Trump. Constant falsehoods, attacks on newspapers, over-the-top insults directed at individual reporters—these are things many in the US media haven’t had to deal with before. To Canadians, though, this type of media manipulation is all too familiar. For several years, former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford treated journalists in much the same way.

The similarities between how these two politicians have approached the media is uncanny, says Daniel Dale, a Toronto Star journalist who covered Ford when he was in office and is now writing about Trump from Washington. Both politicians repeatedly and directly attacked particular media outlets, used the media to rile up their base, personally attacked journalists, and claim everything reported about them is false. “This is all very familiar to me,” says Dale.

As stressful as it was to cover Ford, who passed away last March from cancer, the Canadian media now knows how to report on a post-truth, journalist-bashing politician and they have some ideas for their American counterparts struggling to keep up with Trump. The first piece of advice: Visuals speak louder than words.

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http://www.cjr.org/covering_the_election/rob_ford_donald_trump_journalism.php