IF TRUMP RUNS AGAIN, DO NOT COVER HIM THE SAME WAY

By Margaret Sullivan
Washington Post

Despite my nearly four decades in journalism, I was unprepared for the moment of no return that came on a July day in 2016, as a blazing sun beat down on the streets of Cleveland. Walking around the grounds of the Republican National Convention, I was looking for a column idea. I was new at this, having started at the Washington Post only a few weeks earlier. 

Wandering and observing, I came upon a table of souvenirs, meant to appeal to the convention attendees who had arrived from all corners of the nation to cheer on the Republican Party’s nomination of Donald Trump. I already had seen some gleefully misogynistic anti-Clinton paraphernalia – “Hillary sucks but not like Monica” – but nothing measured up to the horror I felt as I registered the meaning of a T-shirt featuring the image of a noose and these words: “Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some assembly required.”

Over the weeks and months ahead, as I started to write what I hoped were well-reasoned Post columns about Trump’s relationship with the media, I felt an irrational anger coming at me like an unending blast from an industrial-strength hose. Trump hadn’t invented this anger, of course, but he certainly emboldened it – and used it for his own purposes. 

On social media, in phone messages, in emails I received, the sheer hatred from Trump supporters shocked and even frightened me. One, unsigned but from a “lifetime member of the NRA,” asserted that people like me wouldn’t be around much longer. Another, signed “A Real, True Patriot,” read:

“Though I would never read a manure-laden pile of toilet paper like Washington Compost, I heard about your Nazi column about ‘reaching the masses’ with your fake news to convince people that your leftist Nazi lies are truth. You are a well-trained serpent of the left, following communist orders as you were taught. ‘If you say and repeat a lie often enough, it will eventually be seen as truth’ – Lenin … Here’s what you (slithering, fake-news/propaganda- generating slimy slug) should do: Go fornicate yourself with a large, sharp knife, and then eat rat poison until your belly is stuffed.”

I was called the c-word repeatedly. One reader suggested I have my breasts cut off. I tried to let all this nastiness roll off my back and even found it amusing when a Post reader sent me an email calling me a “venomous serpent."

"John Schwartz, then a reporter for the New York Times who had become a friend, suggested I treat it as a badge of honor and write a book titled “Memories of a Venomous Serpent.”

Now, six years later, we journalists know a lot more about covering Trump and his supporters. We’ve come a long way, but certainly made plenty of mistakes. Too many times, we acted as his stenographers or megaphones. 

Too often, we failed to refer to his many falsehoods as lies. It took too long to stop believing that, whenever he calmed down for a moment, he was becoming “presidential.” And it took too long to moderate our instinct to give equal weight to both sides, even when one side was using misinformation for political gain.

It’s been an education for all of us – a gradual realization that the instincts and conventions of traditional journalism weren’t good enough for this moment in our country’s history. As Trump prepares to run again in 2024, it’s worth reminding ourselves of the lessons we’ve learned – and committing to the principle that, when covering politicians who are essentially running against democracy, old-style journalism will no longer suffice.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/10/12/margaret-sullivan-how-media-should-cover-trump-next-campaign/?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWJpZCI6Ijg0MjcxMDEiLCJyZWFzb24iOiJnaWZ0IiwibmJmIjoxNjcxMjg2NzM3LCJpc3MiOiJzdWJzY3JpcHRpb25zIiwiZXhwIjoxNjcyNDk2MzM3LCJpYXQiOjE2NzEyODY3MzcsImp0aSI6Ijk5Yjc5YTQ4LTQ4M2QtNDVlNy05YTM5LWY0ZmZmOTk5NTM5YSIsInVybCI6Imh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndhc2hpbmd0b25wb3N0LmNvbS9tYWdhemluZS8yMDIyLzEwLzEyL21hcmdhcmV0LXN1bGxpdmFuLWhvdy1tZWRpYS1zaG91bGQtY292ZXItdHJ1bXAtbmV4dC1jYW1wYWlnbi8ifQ.a_SvqNis7Ed7EMkEDHwwj9HaBhlu9o_2xv7EhFWDobg