The media’s responsibility for Donald Trump’s political success will be debated for a good long while, with the network honcho Les Moonves’s words about Trump’s candidacy (“It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS”) front and center. But almost from the moment that Trump entered the 2016 presidential race, he has been a justifiably huge story. A lead in the polls became a lead in the delegate count and then, surreally, the nomination of the Republican Party.
Was he ridiculous? Beyond measure. Relevant? Beyond doubt. As long as the reporting about him was skeptical — and, after a certain point, the bulk of it was — there was more reason to train the spotlight on him than to pull it away.
That’s about to change — bigly. He is bound to lose the election, and we in the media will lose the rationale that his every utterance warrants notice as a glimpse into the character of a person in contention for the most consequential job in the world.
But he will remain the same attention-whoring, head-turning carnival act that he is today. And we will face a moment of truth: Do we care chiefly about promoting constructive discussion and protecting this blessed, beleaguered democracy of ours? Or are we more interested in groveling for eyeballs and clicks?Just as Trump is a candidate like no other, he may be a test like none before him.
Mitt Romney didn’t cause any ruckus after his defeat four years ago, and even if he had, he was Mitt Romney: a decent man and an able public servant but hardly box-office gold. He moved on. So did we.
The situation was much the same with John McCain in 2008, John Kerry in 2004 and Al Gore in 2000. Once they had definitively lost their bids for the presidency, they no longer asserted any claim to center stage, and none had lifted the media’s fortunes to a point where letting go of him could be seen as a financial risk. Trump has been a singular boon and singularly potent drug.
We need rules for quitting him, guidelines for the circumstances in which coverage of him is legitimate and those in which it isn’t. That distinction is all the more crucial because he seems poised to undermine important institutions and the democratic process itself. We can lend that effort more credibility or less by paying rapt attention to it or not.
The closest contemporary antecedent to Trump is Sarah Palin. As McCain’s running mate in 2008, she attained a loopy celebrity that transcended both the campaign and politics, and the appetite for her — in the media and the electorate — didn’t wane after Election Day. Nor did her zest for notice. She kept venturing out in various ways, and there were various signs that she’d become a symbol and a spokeswoman for a sizable political constituency. We didn’t quit her.
But she never loomed as large as Trump does, and her reach was abridged in ways that his might not be. She didn’t have, around her, the sorts of advisers and ready-made media machine that Trump has assembled, especially since he brought Breitbart News’ Stephen Bannon onboard. She didn’t have Trump’s money. She didn’t have his decades of practice at manipulating journalists.
He’s already teeing up a stunt: his possible rejection of the election returns. How much should we indulge this tantrum, and for how long? If Trump actually marshals the necessary strategy and resources for legal challenges in states where the results allow them — if he hires lawyers and files paperwork — that’s an indisputably newsworthy development. If he simply rages? That’s not.
He may well be using this campaign as a pivot into a new media venture, which would be a bona fide business story. But it would not be an excuse to record his every insult or attend to his nonstop naysaying about politics and government.
His perspective will continue to matter — within limits — if there’s proof that he’s commanding a real political movement: rallies, infrastructure, the cultivation of candidates in his mold. Without such evidence, he’s merely what The Weekly Standard’s Jay Cost branded him last week: the windbag in winter.
Maybe the media will be spared any tough decisions by Trump himself. He could go gentle into that good night (hey, stranger things have happened). Or he may have finally exhausted the curiosity and patience of all but a tiny fraction of Americans, so that journalists have no economic incentive to stick with him.
The greatest power resides with the audience — which bears much of the culpability, too. Never before have news organizations been able to judge so quickly and accurately what our consumers respond to. If those consumers hadn’t demonstrated such intense interest in Trump, we probably wouldn’t have, either. And if they turn from Trump, they can be sure that most of us will, too, without much equivocation or delay.
But we can’t place all of this on their doorstep. There are adjustments we should make, regardless of metrics.
One is tonal. Trump’s mendacity, viciousness, vulgarity and lack of preparation encouraged a kind of political journalism that wasn’t just adversarial but outraged, urgent, mocking — and rightly so. An uncommon peril called for an uncommon approach. The pitch of the commentary had to match the peculiarity of the moment. But that style can’t become the new normal, not in a country that’s already this polarized. We should dial it down after Trump.
And if he remains catnip to readers and viewers? We should show some courage and restraint.
Yes, it’s an economic necessity — a matter of survival — that we mingle popular fare with more important stuff, using the former to fund the latter: pet videos for Pentagon reporting; a Kardashian for a Khamenei. But Trump isn’t harmless fodder, not if his words and actions after the campaign match those during it. He has the potential to do great damage and is currently threatening as much.
We can’t outright ignore him, because there are important post-mortems to be written, because he’s a central character in the drama of where the G.O.P. goes from here, and because he has captured the imaginations and vented the frustrations of tens of millions of Americans.
But we also can’t roll over for him, the way we’ve sometimes done over the last 16 months, chronicling even those speeches and rallies that amounted to sales pitches for his properties and products. His reckoning comes on Nov. 8. Ours comes shortly after that.
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FRANK BRUNI>
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