One man’s truth is another man’s lie:
the world according to Trump
US President Donald Trump is unconventional in more ways than one. His hair looks silly (come on, it has to be a wig), he wears his ties very long indeed, and he has no political experience prior to becoming president. He also has developed a relationship with the media which has dominated his first two months in office. This relationship is unusual because it is fuelled by distrust and open hatred. At Trump’s very first press conference as President, he pointed at CNN’s Jim Acosta and branded the organisation “fake news”. To say the relationship got off to a bad start is an understatement.
Since then, Trump’s rather authoritarian style of leadership has been contrasted by the press becoming more radical in their coverage, fighting back at Trump’s claims of media bias by taking every chance they can to humiliate and discredit him. But Trump’s anger is directed at one particular section of the press, the so called ‘liberal mainstream media’. This includes big American newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, cable network television such as CNN, ABC, and MSNBC, and even foreign news sources such as Der Spiegel and the BBC.
With some other media sources though, it’s a completely different story.
Trump famously watches Fox News, the right-leaning Murdoch-owned news source with a certain disregard for the facts. He even, on occasion, bases his political statements on what they report. At a rally in February, he talked about terrorism in Sweden, caused, according to Trump, by refugees and immigrants. The previous day, Fox had aired a documentary about crime in Sweden.
He also has a fondness for Breitbart news, the far right news and opinion website which has in the past published infamous articles such as “Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?” and the bafflingly ironic “Racist, Pro-Nazi Roots of Planned Parenthood Revealed”. It’s unsurprising that Trump likes Breitbart; after all, his recently dethroned chief strategist Steve Bannon was executive chair of Breitbart. In 2016, Bannon described Breitbart as the platform for the “alt-right”, a word now synonymous for many with ‘neo-Nazi’.
Trump’s favourite news sources are ones which cover him favourably. This shouldn’t come as a shock. Most presidents have a sketchy relationship with the press for obvious reasons. The press report on their successes but also their failures, with varying degrees of bias, to be sure, but most news organisations have asked awkward questions of the White House at one time or another. Such is the nature of the free press- there to present facts to the public, whether those facts are good or bad.
Bush and Obama, two presidents now being looked at through rose-tinted spectacles, fell out with the press at times. After Anderson Cooper covered the BP oil spill in 2010 for CNN, the Obama administration didn’t grant him an interview again until just before Obama left office. The Obama administration had a less than friendly relationship with the press, despite his quips at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where, in 2016, he famously brought along his own microphone to drop at the end of his speech. Bush’s relationship with the press was largely shaped by world events, first by 9/11 and then by the invasion of Iraq. After Iraq, the press were treated with distrust by the White House. Speaking with the press off the record was equated with leaking, a deadly sin in the eyes of the Bush administration. Bush disliked speaking to the press in press conferences, and subsequently held fewer than most modern presidents. Yet after Trump’s claims of the press being intent on attacking him, Bush was defending the importance of a free press in a democracy.
Some would say it’s healthy for the President to hate the press. They are there to ask difficult questions. Journalist Jake Tapper of CNN claims it isn’t his job “to be liked”. In a pluralist democracy the press have a role in holding politicians to account. But Trump’s branding of CNN, Buzzfeed, and any news organisation which covers him critically, or, some would say, truthfully, as ‘fake news’ takes the understandable caution between the president and the press too far.
More disturbing still, the news sites which Trump has yet to criticise are those who embellish facts and, on occasion, outright lie. Trump loves Breitbart, which reads like it was written by an angry man in his pants in his mother’s basement, but discredits the Wall Street Journal, one of the most trusted newspapers globally.
You’ve got to fake it to make it into the President’s good books these days.
But this isn’t an issue confined to Trump. A study by Aim.org in 2015 found that Fox News television was more trusted than both the Washington Post and the New York Times. This may come as a surprise to the liberal elite, as I know it did to me, but claims which immediately ring alarm bells in the heads of those with a higher level of education don’t do for everyone, and that is dangerous.
Many people do what Trump does, exposing themselves only to news sources which they agree with. I’ve seen it with people I know on the left and right of politics. A leftist will reach for a copy of the Guardian in the UK or watch CNN or MSNBC in the US. Someone on the right will choose the Daily Mail, the Sun, or Telegraph in the UK, depending on their class, and in the US will watch Fox And Friends. I myself pick and choose from the BBC, the Telegraph, the New York Times, and the New European (although you can’t get much more biased than that).
Most of these news sources have played fast and loose with the facts at times, and most have the capacity to do so in the future. Wikipedia recently banned the Daily Mail as a source, saying it is an “unreliable” source prone to “sensationalism”. During the EU referendum, both sides of the debate accused the BBC of being biased in favour of the other.
People don’t seem to care about facts anymore. In the EU referendum, the Leave campaign played off popular prejudices between certain social groups, and even plastered the memorable figure of £350 million on the side of a bus, to achieve their goal. £350 million was a sum which may as well have been plucked out of thin air. It bore little resemblance to any actual figures of payments to the EU or how much could be saved by leaving the EU. In the US election, Trump repeatedly claimed that there were millions of illegals voting, that voter fraud was rife in key swing states such as Pennsylvania, despite there only being four cases of voter fraud in the 2016 election, and that Hillary Clinton should be locked up. And people still bought it. Leave won, Trump won.
Is fake news simply a ‘Trumpism’ for any news source which is unfavourable towards the president, or are we entering a new age where facts are no longer important- the era of ‘post fact politics’?
Trump owes a lot to the media. It was the mainstream media’s borderline hysterical coverage of the property tycoon turned politician with a disregard for political correctness which fuelled his rise to the Republican nomination. He received more free press coverage in the primary season, when the presidential nominee was selected, than his Republican rivals put together. And while much of this coverage was branding him, fairly accurately, as sexist and racist, for Donald Trump, all coverage was good coverage. That is the case no longer. Having your face on every screen in every house in the US with the tagline “Trump does more crazy stuff” is one thing for a Presidential candidate. It is quite another for a president.
Whether what it reports is true or not, Trump needs a better relationship with the press if he wants his presidency to be remembered as anything more than a disaster. At the end of any presidency, all that is left behind as the record of a president’s time in office is a few new paintings on the White House walls and thousands upon thousands of achieved news reports. Before the free press, history was written by the victors. Now, it is written by the media. What CNN broadcasts tomorrow will exist long after Trump is gone. At this rate, the most frequently occurring phrases in the archives marked ‘Trump, 2017’ will be “Twitter”, “fake news”, and “tiny hands”.
Emily Evans, Y13
Since then, Trump’s rather authoritarian style of leadership has been contrasted by the press becoming more radical in their coverage, fighting back at Trump’s claims of media bias by taking every chance they can to humiliate and discredit him. But Trump’s anger is directed at one particular section of the press, the so called ‘liberal mainstream media’. This includes big American newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, cable network television such as CNN, ABC, and MSNBC, and even foreign news sources such as Der Spiegel and the BBC.
With some other media sources though, it’s a completely different story.
Trump famously watches Fox News, the right-leaning Murdoch-owned news source with a certain disregard for the facts. He even, on occasion, bases his political statements on what they report. At a rally in February, he talked about terrorism in Sweden, caused, according to Trump, by refugees and immigrants. The previous day, Fox had aired a documentary about crime in Sweden.
He also has a fondness for Breitbart news, the far right news and opinion website which has in the past published infamous articles such as “Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?” and the bafflingly ironic “Racist, Pro-Nazi Roots of Planned Parenthood Revealed”. It’s unsurprising that Trump likes Breitbart; after all, his recently dethroned chief strategist Steve Bannon was executive chair of Breitbart. In 2016, Bannon described Breitbart as the platform for the “alt-right”, a word now synonymous for many with ‘neo-Nazi’.
Trump’s favourite news sources are ones which cover him favourably. This shouldn’t come as a shock. Most presidents have a sketchy relationship with the press for obvious reasons. The press report on their successes but also their failures, with varying degrees of bias, to be sure, but most news organisations have asked awkward questions of the White House at one time or another. Such is the nature of the free press- there to present facts to the public, whether those facts are good or bad.
Bush and Obama, two presidents now being looked at through rose-tinted spectacles, fell out with the press at times. After Anderson Cooper covered the BP oil spill in 2010 for CNN, the Obama administration didn’t grant him an interview again until just before Obama left office. The Obama administration had a less than friendly relationship with the press, despite his quips at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, where, in 2016, he famously brought along his own microphone to drop at the end of his speech. Bush’s relationship with the press was largely shaped by world events, first by 9/11 and then by the invasion of Iraq. After Iraq, the press were treated with distrust by the White House. Speaking with the press off the record was equated with leaking, a deadly sin in the eyes of the Bush administration. Bush disliked speaking to the press in press conferences, and subsequently held fewer than most modern presidents. Yet after Trump’s claims of the press being intent on attacking him, Bush was defending the importance of a free press in a democracy.
Some would say it’s healthy for the President to hate the press. They are there to ask difficult questions. Journalist Jake Tapper of CNN claims it isn’t his job “to be liked”. In a pluralist democracy the press have a role in holding politicians to account. But Trump’s branding of CNN, Buzzfeed, and any news organisation which covers him critically, or, some would say, truthfully, as ‘fake news’ takes the understandable caution between the president and the press too far.
More disturbing still, the news sites which Trump has yet to criticise are those who embellish facts and, on occasion, outright lie. Trump loves Breitbart, which reads like it was written by an angry man in his pants in his mother’s basement, but discredits the Wall Street Journal, one of the most trusted newspapers globally.
You’ve got to fake it to make it into the President’s good books these days.
But this isn’t an issue confined to Trump. A study by Aim.org in 2015 found that Fox News television was more trusted than both the Washington Post and the New York Times. This may come as a surprise to the liberal elite, as I know it did to me, but claims which immediately ring alarm bells in the heads of those with a higher level of education don’t do for everyone, and that is dangerous.
Many people do what Trump does, exposing themselves only to news sources which they agree with. I’ve seen it with people I know on the left and right of politics. A leftist will reach for a copy of the Guardian in the UK or watch CNN or MSNBC in the US. Someone on the right will choose the Daily Mail, the Sun, or Telegraph in the UK, depending on their class, and in the US will watch Fox And Friends. I myself pick and choose from the BBC, the Telegraph, the New York Times, and the New European (although you can’t get much more biased than that).
Most of these news sources have played fast and loose with the facts at times, and most have the capacity to do so in the future. Wikipedia recently banned the Daily Mail as a source, saying it is an “unreliable” source prone to “sensationalism”. During the EU referendum, both sides of the debate accused the BBC of being biased in favour of the other.
People don’t seem to care about facts anymore. In the EU referendum, the Leave campaign played off popular prejudices between certain social groups, and even plastered the memorable figure of £350 million on the side of a bus, to achieve their goal. £350 million was a sum which may as well have been plucked out of thin air. It bore little resemblance to any actual figures of payments to the EU or how much could be saved by leaving the EU. In the US election, Trump repeatedly claimed that there were millions of illegals voting, that voter fraud was rife in key swing states such as Pennsylvania, despite there only being four cases of voter fraud in the 2016 election, and that Hillary Clinton should be locked up. And people still bought it. Leave won, Trump won.
Is fake news simply a ‘Trumpism’ for any news source which is unfavourable towards the president, or are we entering a new age where facts are no longer important- the era of ‘post fact politics’?
Trump owes a lot to the media. It was the mainstream media’s borderline hysterical coverage of the property tycoon turned politician with a disregard for political correctness which fuelled his rise to the Republican nomination. He received more free press coverage in the primary season, when the presidential nominee was selected, than his Republican rivals put together. And while much of this coverage was branding him, fairly accurately, as sexist and racist, for Donald Trump, all coverage was good coverage. That is the case no longer. Having your face on every screen in every house in the US with the tagline “Trump does more crazy stuff” is one thing for a Presidential candidate. It is quite another for a president.
Whether what it reports is true or not, Trump needs a better relationship with the press if he wants his presidency to be remembered as anything more than a disaster. At the end of any presidency, all that is left behind as the record of a president’s time in office is a few new paintings on the White House walls and thousands upon thousands of achieved news reports. Before the free press, history was written by the victors. Now, it is written by the media. What CNN broadcasts tomorrow will exist long after Trump is gone. At this rate, the most frequently occurring phrases in the archives marked ‘Trump, 2017’ will be “Twitter”, “fake news”, and “tiny hands”.
Emily Evans, Y13