Good morning from Philly. The billboards and TV ads in this city are a constant reminder that, as Cecilia Vega said on "60 Minutes" last night, "Pennsylvania is the most pivotal battleground in the race to the White House." So, on this Columbus Day, we're devoting this entire edition to campaign coverage.
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Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images |
With just three weeks to go until what is arguably the highest-stakes election of our lifetime and polls show the presidential race down to a coin-toss, several things are true at the same time:
– Donald Trump has a very good chance to win the election.
– He routinely lies to the public, peddles racist propaganda, and echoes history's worst dictators by warning about an "enemy from within."
– He poses clear threats to democracy, the rule of law, and freedom of the press. He has threatened virtually all of the biggest media and tech companies in the U.S.
– Many of his former appointees call him unfit, dangerous, and even "fascist."
– His supporters trust him and his feelings over the facts reported by news outlets, even the outlets aligned with his movement.
Journalists are supposed to convey all of this, and more, to an audience that frequently doesn't want to hear about politics at all, and certainly doesn't want to hear anything uncomfortable or upsetting.
The AP's David Bauder nailed it last week: "Nearly a decade into the Trump Era of politics, less than a month from his third Election Day as the Republican candidate for president and there is still remarkably little consensus within the media about how best to cover Donald Trump. Are reporters 'sanewashing' Trump, or are they succumbing to the 'banality of crazy?' Should his rallies be aired at length, or not at all? To fact-check or not fact-check?"
There is no one "right" answer. The American news media is so fragmented and stretched so thin that it will inevitably disappoint anyone who insists on conformity and consistency. For instance: Jay Rosen's "not the odds, but the stakes" mantra has been internalized by many reporters and voters, but polls often still get more play than Trump's campaign promises. Gaffes by Kamala Harris get intense coverage while Trump's incoherence gets a shrug.
So what should journalists be doing? Giving readers and viewers all the information about the campaign, including the profane, the painful, and the pathetic. Don't sugarcoat or sanitize or "sanewash" anything about Trump or Harris. Don't omit the historical context. And don't flinch.
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"One election, two worlds" |
That's how CBS News framed this year's race over the weekend. Polling by CBS showed "two groups of voters that look out at the country and don't even agree on what's happening right now."
Trump supporters are, overall, less trusting of external sources and less likely to agree with factual statements. Last month illegal crossings at the southern border "reached their lowest levels since the beginning of the Biden administration," CBS noted, but in the poll, 51% of Trump voters said the number of migrants has been increasing recently. To be fair, many Harris supporters don't seem to grasp the facts, either. The CBS poll asked if the stock market is higher or lower year to date (since every major index is up by double digits) and only 50% of Harris voters and 36% of Trump voters said the market is higher now. The remainder said "not sure," it's about the same, or it's lower now. There was a much more dramatic partisan split about Trump's hurricane-relief lies...
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Breakdown of a shared reality |
Reporters and researchers who study misinformation are at their wits' end. I feel the same way as NYT reporter Stuart Thompson, who wrote on Threads that he is "really struggling with how to communicate how bad things are getting misinfo-wise." He wrote that "it just becomes a lot of noise... I'm really concerned that the public doesn't quite grasp what's happening."
Last week, The Atlantic's Charlie Warzel wrote an essay about the same concern. His headline: "I'm Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is." His point: This is something "darker than a misinformation crisis." Warzel says "Americans are divided not just by political beliefs but by whether they believe in a shared reality — or desire one at all."
>> Renee DiResta, also writing for The Atlantic, says that "in the modern right-wing propaganda landscape, where facts are recast as subjective and any authority outside MAGA is deemed illegitimate, eroding trust in institutions is not an unfortunate side effect—it is the goal."
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>> NPR published the transcript of Steve Inskeep's fascinating interview with NYT executive editor Joe Kahn. "I don't think there's any magic formula" to covering Trump, Kahn says.
>> This Politico article by Myah Ward is an excellent example of how to report on Trump's rallies. The headline: "We watched 20 Trump rallies. His racist, anti-immigrant messaging is getting darker."
>> A strong story by Sahil Kapur: "Trump is ramping up his rhetoric depicting his political rivals and critics as criminals, while dropping a long trail of suggestions that he favors outlawing political speech that he deems misleading or challenges his claims to power." (NBC News)
>> Talking with his friend Maria Bartiromo on Fox News, Trump suggested using the military on Election Day against "radical left lunatics," who he called "the enemy from within."
>> Hours after the Bartiromo interview aired, Trump ranted on Truth Social that "Fox News spends so much time interviewing the other side that we must win, DESPITE them. So crazy!"
>> Harris taped an interview with Roland Martin for his daily digital show.
>> TIME owner Marc Benioff called out Harris for declining interview requests with his magazine.
>> A view inside the pro-Trump media: The most popular piece on The Federalist's website over the weekend was titled "Kamala Harris Is Too Stupid To Be President."
>> Don't look now, but "Trump's social media stock is making an epic comeback as election nears," CNN's Matt Egan reports. The turnaround "has been fueled by the perceived odds of Trump winning in November."
>> The latest CNN poll of polls finds no clear leader in the presidential race.
>> Ezra Klein says you should ignore the polls between now and election day. Here's why.
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Trump critics see an alarming double standard |
Over the weekend, I reached out to media critics across the political spectrum for their views about campaign coverage. Parker Malloy, a former writer for Media Matters who now authors The Present Age newsletter, had this to say: "When it comes to covering Trump, the standard too often seems to be whether the story will sway his hardcore base — and if not, it's dismissed as irrelevant. But the job of the press isn't to cater to a candidate's most loyal followers; it's to hold all candidates to the same rigorous standards of accountability. This is the news media's time to shine."
>> I noticed Will Stancil making a similar point on X: "The media sees Kamala as running for chief executive, and criticizes her when she falls short of that standard. And it sees Trump as running for Clown President, and only criticizes him when he falls short of that standard. Which is impossible."
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Newsweek opinion editor Batya Ungar-Sargon, author of "Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy," told me economic privilege is evident in the national media's coverage of Harris: "The idea that this election is about character, or that people should vote based on the joy Harris inspires in the Obamas and Oprah, is one you have to have a lot of economic security to entertain. It's the 'Let them eat joy' campaign; unfortunately, a lot of our media sound like Marie Antoinette!" Her point: "Working-class people are struggling to make it in this country and are hungry to hear how their lives will be improved under Harris."
>> My old friend John Carney, now the economics editor at Breitbart, added: "The attempt by reporters and columnists to persuade voters that the economy is spectacular obviously has not worked. We'd be better served by reporting on the sources of our discontent. And before anyone says it’s all partisanship, remember that polls show less than 5% of Democrats say the economy is excellent."
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On Tuesday, PolitiFact creator Bill Adair is coming out with "Beyond the Big Lie," a book about political lying, "why Republicans do it more," and how to make the liars stop. Adair told me, "I've never seen a campaign in which lying has been more pervasive, yet people seem so blasé about it! We need to change that." For a preview of the book, watch Adair's conversation with Jon Stewart or read his essay for The Atlantic.
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Tuesday: New books include Bob Woodward's "War" and Al Pacino's memoir "Sonny Boy."
Tuesday: Harris's town hall event with Charlamagne tha God airs on iHeartRadio.
Wednesday: Trump's all-women town hall airs on Fox News at 11 a.m. ET.
Thursday: Trump's town hall with Univision airs in prime time.
Thursday: Netflix releases quarterly earnings.
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Six thought-provoking reads |
>> "Every Republican in elected office will be expected to go out and lie again if Trump loses on November 5. And they will do it, even if it causes violence," A.B. Stoddard writes. (The Bulwark)
>> David A. Graham says "the paradox of running a campaign against Donald Trump is that you have to convince voters that he is both a liar and deadly serious." (The Atlantic)
>> David Corn argues that Trump is "not operating a political campaign as much as mounting a disinformation campaign." (Mother Jones)
>> This is an extraordinary essay by Leslie Rangel, a former TV anchor turned senior editor at The Barbed Wire, about her sister Victoria: "She Voted for Trump. Then She Had Two Terrifying Miscarriages in Texas." And now Victoria regrets her vote. (The Barbed Wire)
>> Eight years ago, Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak spent election night with a group of middle school girls who thought they were about to witness the election of America's first female president. Now they're women and they are "revenge voting," Dvorak writes in this followup piece. (Wash Post)
>> What are "the loves and desires that draw evangelicals to Donald Trump?" Mike Cosper says he knows. (Christianity Today)
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USA Today has a regular feature called the "week in extremism." This week: "At a campaign event last week for GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance, attendees waved placards emblazoned with a slogan that is also used by a notorious white supremacist group. Meanwhile, anti-drag and anti-LGBTQ hate sees a resurgence this week, and a new report shows extremists and conspiracy theorists spinning up lies in the wake of Hurricane Helene."
>> The latest: FEMA personnel in Rutherford County, NC had to "stop working and move to a different area because of concerns over 'armed militia' threatening government workers in the region," Brianna Sacks reported for the Post.
>> "66% of voters say the threat of violence against political leaders and their families is a major problem in the country," according to Pew's latest survey.
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"A Trump hat by a fresh grave" |
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This newsletter was produced with Liam Reilly and edited by Jon Passantino. Email us your feedback and tips here. We'll be back with a "normal" edition tomorrow – as if anything is normal nowadays!
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