From the Magazine: 'When covering politicians who are essentially running against democracy, old-style journalism will no longer suffice,' Margaret Sullivan writes in her forthcoming book.
Back in 2016, I was still looking for common ground with the Trump crowd. It fit with my background as a traditional newspaper journalist. During nearly 13 years as, ending in 2012, I had believed that I could listen to or communicate with our readers, whatever their politics — and I was registered to vote as a “blank.” Our editorial board, which I sat on, endorsed candidates from various parties, and I had courteous relationships with officeholders of all stripes.
Too many reporters and their editors didn’t seem to want to figure out how to cover Trump properly. From the moment he descended the golden escalator at Manhattan’s Trump Tower in June 2015 to announce his candidacy, the news media was in his thrall. Journalists couldn’t stop writing about him, showing him on TV and even broadcasting images of the empty stage waiting for him to arrive at a rally. Trump had described himself as “the ratings machine,” and for once he wasn’t exaggerating.
Tossing away my useless column, I wrote that the media coverage of the 2016 race had been, as I put it, “” They — and I would include myself in this criticism — employed a kind of magical thinking: A Trump presidency shouldn’t happen, therefore it won’t happen. In every way, Trump was a deeply abnormal candidate, but the news media couldn’t seem to communicate that effectively or even grasp the problem., and neither is the democracy it represents. American democracy is now on the edge of a precipice. What can members of the press do to help keep it from tipping over as the 2024 campaign looms? What should we have learned since that summer in 2016?
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