Jessell | Taking Stock Of Trump’s Media Legacy

Harry Jessell

At TVNewsCheck’s virtual TV2025 conference in October, station group chiefs Emily Barr and Byron Allen ripped into President Trump for what Barr called his “historic assault on journalism” and what Allen called his “damn-near genocide against journalism.”

If you know Barr and Allen, you are not surprised. They are unabashed critics of the president and that they want him out in January for  reasons than go far beyond the media.

Still, Allen’s hyperbole aside, their comments were on the mark.

Since he declared his candidacy five years ago, Trump had waged an aggressive and unending campaign against the mainstream media, declaring them “fake news,” “idiot bastards” and “the enemy of the people.”

Trump made the calculated decision that he didn’t need the mainstream media. He quickly won over right-win partisans like Rush Limbaugh and his radio ilk as well as Fox News. And, of course, he had Twitter, through which he could bypass all traditional media and pump his thoughts directly to followers.

It proved to be a winning strategy in 2016 and almost again this year. If not for the pandemic, we might be looking at the four-year renewal of the most engrossing reality show in the history of television.

With Trump scheduled to exit Washington in 43 days, it’s a good time to ask what his news media legacy will be, what lasting impact his words and actions will have on media and their relationship with the American public.

The big thing, of course, is that he has further undermined credibility in the mainstream media, which includes the Big 3 broadcast networks. Many of his supporters don’t believe anything they hear on the news if it doesn’t align with whatever story Trump is telling.

A 2019 Gallup survey found that only 40% of people have “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of trust in the media and 33% have “none at all.” The 40% is down from 53% in 1997.

Trump didn’t trigger the erosion of trust, but it’s safe to say that he accelerated it since descending that escalator into the Republican primaries in 2015. I’m guessing that there is a lot of overlap between the none-at-all folks and the MAGA horde.

The great irony is that Trump is the great fount of out-and-out lies and misinformation. To paraphrase Allen, he has waged a damn-near genocide against truth. He is the fake news.

The loss of trust in the mainstream media is a great loss for the country. Despite their biases, they remain tethered to the facts as best as they can be established. Those facts are the basis of making public policy. And with no agreement on the facts, making new law to address the critical and controversial problems facing the country is extremely difficult.

The widespread loss of trust has also created openings for outlets that adhere closely to the Trump line and, like Trump, they do not allow facts to get in their way. They are advocates for a cause (actually a person), not genuine news organizations. I’m talking about Newsmax, One American Network, Breitbart and others.

Remember, being a Republican is no longer good enough. In Trump world, it’s not conservative vs. liberal or right vs. left. It’s us vs. them.

It will be interesting to see how Fox News plays it. Will it move to the middle and allow itself to be tagged as “mainstream,” or will it embrace Trumpism without apology. (According to Vanity Fair, Rupert Murdoch is trying to preempt his rivals by luring Trump into the Fox orbit with book and TV deals worth $100 million.)

Trump has also created a fertile ground for conspiracy theories to flourish. In the hothouse of hidden messages, labyrinthian plots and nefarious cabals, true believers will concoct their own reality, smearing opponents while explaining away the sins of allies.

For the past month, Trump has shown the way, constructing a theory of how the election was stolen with no evidence, as if evidence or facts of any kind have ever been necessary for his assertions. In late November, polls showed that 70%-80% of Republicans remained convinced that they and Trump were cheated.

With the emergence of the aforesaid Trumpian news outlets, such theories will be nurtured on cable TV, not just on social media and the murky back channels of the internet.

Other media consequences of the Trump years:

• CNN dropped all pretense of impartiality, joining MSNBC in providing a counterweight to Trump’s messaging and counterprogramming to Fox News. I was sorry to see it. The country needs a fully functional 24/7 news sources above the partisan fray.
• The Trump presidency has been good to some media businesses, not only to those outlets that supported him, but those who opposed him. Trump’s second reality show was must-viewing (and must-reading) from the very start. Ratings and digital subscription soared. But to fully reap the benefit, you had to take sides as CNN, MSNBC and Fox did. For its part, The New York Times’ editorial and op-ed pages offered daily bashings of the president. If Trump hoped to crushed the “liberal” media, he failed. Instead, he energized them, gave them a clear purpose and strengthened them financially.
• Trumpism has led to a coarsening of public discourse. Five years ago, it was unheard for a network or newspaper to call or even suggest the president was a liar. No more. The Washington Post has a running feature, counting Trump’s lies (23,035 as of today and counting). I don’t think such incivility is good for America, but I understand it. It’s born out of frustration and the impulse to meet blunt talk with blunt talk.
• A great debate over content regulation of social media now seems certain. Unhappy with Twitter’s censoring his tweets, Trump demanded action. He wants rules banning social media from deleting tweets or tagging them with labels questioning their veracity or linking them to conflicting information. In other words, he wants to be free to tweet whatever nonsense or self-serving lies he wants. (See? Now I’m calling the president a liar.) Biden wants to regulate social media, too. But rather than limiting their role, he wants them to be more active in policing content for hate, misinformation and other speech Dems generally find unacceptable. As a First Amendment guy, both approaches make me queasy.
• Trump set into motion what most traditional media have been hoping for for a long while – a takedown of Google and Facebook on anti-trust grounds. Just about everybody east of Silicon Valley believes that they are simply too big, too rich and too arrogant in their dealing with others. The Trump DOJ has already filed suit against Google, and the Federal Trade Commission is circling Facebook.
• It’s not just mainstream news organizations that have become targets; it’s also the people who work for them. Remember all the rallies where he would turn the crowd against the reporters and their cameras? How about those clever T-shirts: “Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some Assembly Required”? CBS had to scramble security for Lesley Stahl after her testy pre-election interview with Trump on 60 Minutes. Local reporters felt the hostility, too. While Trump did not explicitly include local TV among the “enemy of the people,” he didn’t bother to exclude it. His shotgun blasts hit all news media, national and local.
• Trump trampled on another Washington norm when he fired FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly for not giving full-throated support for his demand that the FCC regulate social media (see above). As an independent agency, the FCC is supposed to be beyond the direct control of the White House. It was clear from the firing that that would not be the case in a second Trump term. I expect that Biden, as an establishment politician, will keep a respectable distance from the FCC during his tenure, although he might step in on big issues as presidents from both parties have done in the past. But the O’Rielly firing sets a dangerous precedent for the next president who feels that every lever of power in Washington in there for him or her to push.

I have chewed over Trump’s media legacy here fully aware that although he will be out of the White House on Jan. 20, he will not be leaving the public stage. I suspect he will continue to lead his movement from Mar-a-Lago or Bedminster and shape his final legacy for at least a few more years. I don’t discount the possibility of a second run in 2024. The Republican Party long ago lost the ability to contain him.

Sadly, this is a discussion far from done.

Harry A. Jessell is editor at large of TVNewsCheck. He can be contacted here. You can read earlier columns here.