From a Media Equation column by Ben Smith of the New York Times headlined “Journalists Aren’t the Enemy of the People. But We’re Not Your Friends.”:
The worst thing about being a reporter in the age of Donald Trump is, of course, the president’s concerted attacks on the free press. The second-worst thing is well-meaning readers who say things like, “Thank you for what you do.”. . .
But when some of you who are alarmed by the rise of Mr. Trump thank a political journalist or a television pundit, you’re feeding our worst instincts — toward self-importance, toward making ourselves the story and toward telling you exactly what you want to hear. And you’re leading us into a dangerous temptation at a time of maximum pressure on the free press.
“The many mainstream journalists who have been charting Trump’s ceaseless outrages for four long years, myself included, inevitably risk becoming performance artists for appreciative readers who already agree with us,” said Frank Rich, the executive producer of the HBO shows “Veep” and “Succession” and a former New York Times columnist. “You have to wonder if any of it has swayed a single Trump voter.”
Mr. Trump obviously recognizes the media’s desire to star in the story, and he’s trying to exploit it, conflating the most theatrical political journalism with the broad, dogged and often revelatory work of reporting. He has put the brand-name establishment media on the ballot in November. He’d clearly be as happy running against NBC-New York Times-CNN-Atlantic as he is running against Joe Biden. . . .
If you watch Fox News, you see every day how the Republican Party defines itself as a party driven by grievance more than any specific policy, and grievance against the media is its highest form. It even appears in the one-page document that stands in for a Republican Party platform.
Mr. Trump’s great gift is for polarization, and he’s driven many of the people who hate him to love journalism, particularly its most dramatic forms, with a new passion. Watch cable news to see the benefits to playing the role of the outraged television journalist. The White House beat was, before Mr. Trump, a dull hostage situation, with reporters shackled to a never-ending, often empty, sequence of ritualized events and briefings. Now, it’s an ongoing morality play about Truth, in which reporters become famous as they confront Mr. Trump for lying, and the president delights his base by berating them. . . .
We are, after all, selling something. You can see the tension between exploiting Mr. Trump’s attention and being exploited by him in the reaction by CNN and The New York Times. Both hired ad agencies to produce glossy marketing campaigns, seeking to respond to the president’s attacks on their journalism but avoid being wholly defined by them. . . .
There are things that journalists can do over the next two months to resist our more self-indulgent impulses, do great journalism and stay off the ballot.
One is to double down on the best of the coverage of Mr. Trump’s attack on democratic institutions. That is — not simply to call a tactic racist or undemocratic, but to introduce new reporting into clear patterns of how Mr. Trump, for instance, “uses race for gain” or has become part of “the swamp” he decried. It is better to focus on dangerous actions — attacks on the voting infrastructure, for instance, and Justice Department moves against political enemies — than the president’s unending outrageous comments. . . .
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Ben Smith is the media columnist. He joined The Times in 2020 after eight years as founding editor in chief of BuzzFeed News. Before that, he covered politics for Politico, The New York Daily News, The New York Observer and The New York Sun. Email: ben.smith@nytimes.com @benyt
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