REAL NEWS
By David Remnick, The New Yorker
Presidents
have always complained about the press. At awards ceremonies and
journalism-school conferences, Thomas Jefferson is often remembered for his
principled support: in 1787, he wrote to the Virginia statesman Edward
Carrington, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government
without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate
to prefer the latter.” Yet, by 1814, having endured the Presidency, Jefferson
was not quite as high-minded, whining by post to a former congressman about
“the putrid state” of newspapers and “the vulgarity, & mendacious spirit of
those who write for them.”
You could hardly blame
him. How would you like to read that one of John Adams’s surrogates has branded
you a “mean-spirited, low-lived fellow”? No President escapes scrutiny or
invective. In 1864, Harper’s listed
the many epithets that the Northern press had hurled at Abraham Lincoln: Filthy
Story-Teller, Despot, Liar, Thief, Braggart, Buffoon, Monster, Ignoramus,
Scoundrel, Perjurer, Robber, Swindler, Tyrant, Fiend, Butcher, Ape, Demon,
Beast, Baboon, Gorilla, Imbecile.
Donald
Trump began his career convinced that reporters, once exposed to his myriad
charms, would be willing stenographers of his story. He learned to elevate
himself, his brand, and his interests largely by supplying the New York
tabloids with a ready-made character, a strutting snake-oil salesman who
provided an unending stream of gossip-page items about his personal and
commercial exploits. It was of little concern to anyone that these items were,
in the main, preposterous. Occasionally, investigative reporters, profile
writers, and the courts would look more deeply into Trump’s swindles and
business bankruptcies, but, as long as he skirted total ruin, he seemed to
think that even his bad press added to his allure.
Trump’s relationship with
reporters inevitably changed when he shifted his occupation to the command of
the federal government. First as a candidate, and then in the early days of his
Presidency, he discovered that the press was a variegated beast; Cindy Adams
and Maggie Haberman were not of the same stuff. He could still depend on
toadying support from some quarters, particularly the editorial holdings of
Rupert Murdoch and emerging properties like Breitbart and Newsmax; however, he
was now getting a more scrupulous going-over from what Sarah Palin had called
“the lamestream media.” Trump craved the acceptance of such institutions as
the Times and the Washington Post, but he knew that his base loathed them. And so he
would loathe them, too, while at the same time declaring a new, Trumpian
reality, constructed of what his adviser Kellyanne Conway memorably called
“alternative facts.”
On his second day in office,
Trump sent his press secretary, Sean Spicer, to the White House briefing room
to con the nation the way he had conned the tabloids. The crowds on the Mall
for Trump’s Inauguration, Spicer insisted, were unprecedented, despite the
evidence to the contrary. A few weeks later, as news coverage further nettled
Trump, he took to Twitter to declare that CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, and the Times were “the enemy of the American People.” The
resonance was clear. In the Soviet era, to be branded an “enemy of the people”
was to await a boxcar to the Gulag. Even the U.S. Senate, whose Republican
majority would prove so unfailingly loyal to Trump, seemed alarmed. In August,
2018, the Senate passed, by unanimous consent, a resolution attesting to “the
vital and indispensable role the free press serves.”
But
Trump knew precisely what he was doing, and he never let up. During a meeting
at Trump Tower, Lesley Stahl, of CBS News, asked why he kept attacking the
press. “You know why I do it?” he said. “I do it to discredit you all and
demean you all, so that, when you write negative stories about me, no one will
believe you.”
Trump
may have devoted more mental energy to his degradation of the press—through
lawsuits, threats, and hundreds of tweets—than to any other issue. He called
reporters “corrupt,” “scum,” and “some of the worst human beings you’ll ever
meet.” And those words riled up his base, so much so that at his rallies
reporters were often berated and menaced. Last year, the F.B.I. arrested a
Coast Guard officer who had drawn up a hit list that included reporters at
MSNBC and CNN, and an Army officer was arrested after allegedly conducting an
online discussion in which he talked about blowing up the headquarters of a
major TV network.
Trump’s assault on the
press and his assault on the truth––he made more than sixteen thousand false or
misleading claims in his first three years in office, according to the
Washington Post’s fact-checking
operation––have taken their toll. Where once American Presidents gave at least
rhetorical support to civil liberties, he has given comfort to foreign
autocrats, from El-Sisi to Erdoğan, who routinely parrot his slogan of “fake
news” and lock up offending journalists. Perhaps Trump’s most disgraceful act
in this regard was his refusal to speak a critical word against the Saudi
leadership after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for the Post.
The costs at home are no
less ominous. It is now estimated that one American dies every minute
from covid-19. Every two or
three days there is a 9/11-scale death count. How many of those people died
because they chose to believe the President’s dismissive accounts of the
disease rather than what public-health officials were telling the press? Half
of Republican voters believe Trump’s charge that the 2020 election was
“rigged.” What will be the lasting effects on American democracy of that
disinformation campaign? Bit by bit, Trump is being forced to give up his
attempt to overturn the election. But he will continue his efforts to build an
alternative reality around himself. Now that Fox News has proved insufficiently
servile, he is likely to join forces with, buy, or launch an even more
destructive media enterprise.
As President, Joe Biden
cannot battle the debasement of a reality principle in American life by
executive order. But support for press freedoms ought to be a central element
of his domestic and foreign policies. What’s more, the press itself needs to
learn from the prolonged emergency of the past four years. Just as it must go
on applying investigative and analytical pressure to all forms of power,
including the new Administration, it cannot relax in calling out the deeply
anti-factual and anti-democratic foundation of a movement like Trump’s. The stakes
are high. Donald Trump may be moving to Mar-a-Lago, but he, and the alternative
reality he has created, could be with us for a long time.
