How Donald Trump has harnessed the political power of post-truth communication

The new media message is here - where Twitter trounces a press conference and alternative websites spread unchecked viral news. Richard Godwin reports
The new media message: Donald Trump and Nigel Farage
Paul Dallimore
Richard Godwin24 November 2016

Anyone who followed Donald Trump’s Twitter campaign during the US presidential election will know that he didn’t shy away from attacking his enemies: Mexicans, Muslims, “crooked Hillary”, climate change scientists, former prisoners of war, taxpayers — the list goes on. But as scattershot as his approach appeared, he reserved particular scorn for the press: “Wow, it is unbelievable how distorted, one-sided and biased the media is against us. The failing @nytimes is a joke. @CNN is laughable!” was one broadside in July.

Again and again he lambasted the “mainstream media”, and two outlets in particular: CNN, the original 24-hour news channel; and The New York Times, America’s newspaper of record. One day in August he managed six anti-CNN tweets in five minutes, concluding: “People believe CNN these days almost as little as they believe Hillary... that’s really saying something!” His final campaign rally concluded with thousands of Trumpers chanting: “CNN SUCKS! CNN SUCKS!”

The Trump insurgency has broken with convention in many ways. However, for those who have reported on it, the most disorienting is how he has mastered the 2016 media landscape, sowing chaos and bewilderment among those who value quaint notions such as truth and accuracy. In the immediate term there’s every sign that he will continue to act as America’s tweeter-in-chief, announcing key appointments via social media as opposed to the traditional press conference.

He finds Twitter “tremendous,” he told CBS in his first interview as President-elect, boasting of his 100,000 new followers. “It’s a modern form of communication. There should be nothing you should be ashamed of. It’s — it’s where it’s at.”

One tweet in particular catches the eye: “Many people would like to see @Nigel_Farage represent Great Britain as their Ambassador to the United States. He would do a great job!” It must surely be coincidence that the Ukip insurgent — or “BREXIT LEADER NIGEL FARAGE” as he is unfailingly billed in the States — has recently been made a star columnist on Breitbart News, the so-called “alt-Right” website whose former CEO, Steve Bannon, is now Trump’s chief strategist.

There are some comforting precedents in Trump’s direct appeal to voters. Franklin Roosevelt treated the electorate to “fireside chats” about the state of the economy; Barack Obama has issued larky viral videos. But no President has bypassed the mainstream media to spread the message that its gatekeepers are not to be trusted.

Presidential aide: Stephen Bannon has been dogged with accusations of racism
REUTERS

Meanwhile, Bannon’s centrality to Trump’s administration suggests that Breitbart will play a role akin to Pravda in the Soviet Union — or at least Vladimir Putin’s state-controlled Russian media. Will its obnoxious mix of character assassinations, race-baiting and unguarded misogyny (one headline referred to the Democratic congresswoman Gloria Gifford as “the gun control movement’s human shield” after she was the victim of an attempted assassination) now represent the US political establishment view?

With Republicans controlling Congress, mainstream journalists feel that their role in holding the President to account has never been so important — or so imperilled. “Trump is teeing up the press to play the same role that Hillary Clinton played in the campaign,” says Emily Bazelon, a New York Times reporter. “When he tweeted about the press this week he used the adjective ‘crooked’, just as he always called Clinton ‘crooked Hillary’. We’ve seen this movie before. The press is a useful punching bag for him. The reason he’s whipping up a crowd to attack a mainstream media outlet is because it serves his interests.”

Riots break out after Donald Trump US wins Presidential Election

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Many have traced Trump’s animus back to the infamous Washington Correspondents’ Dinner of 2011, when Obama turned his comic ire on Trump (who was then launching his political career with his ludicrous inquiry into Obama’s birth certificate). The reporters hooted; Trump did not.

But Trump has never held journalists in high regard. In her most recent article, Billionaires vs the Press in the Era of Trump, Bazelon details the tycoon’s history of silencing the press. She points to seven lawsuits that Trump has taken out against journalists in the past and his professed desire to reform libel law to make it easier to do so in the future.

Political ideals: Bannon heads up the controversial news site Breitbart
Breitbart

One of his main backers, Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, recently funded the lawsuit that shut down the news site Gawker. “When Trump is angry he is very willing to use the law as a weapon against journalists, and that overrides any concerns he has about the First Amendment,” says Bazelon — that’s the bit that enshrines the right to free speech. A survey by Pew Research found that only 49 per cent of Trump supporters felt it was important that “news organisations are free to criticise political leaders”.

In the meantime, civil society feels that bit more fragile. “I don’t think we’ve seen anything like this in US history,” says Bazelon. “Trump is breaking with all sorts of norms and conventions, and that’s alarming because most Western countries rely on norms and conventions as much as we rely on the law.” She points to Trump’s attempts to persuade Farage to campaign against offshore wind farms in Scotland — which spoil the views from his golf course near Aberdeen. “This is troubling. He’s obviously seeking political favours to benefit his businesses.” When reporters raised concerns about this conflict of interest he dismissed them — via Twitter, again — “Only the crooked media makes this a big deal!”

The Farage connection underscores the parallels with the British media. The Brexit campaigns pushed demonstrably false claims — such as the notion that Turkey was about to join the EU — realising they would gain traction on Facebook and Twitter irrespective of their veracity. Farage, no longer such a media darling, has now taken to addressing his supporters directly on YouTube. And Right-leaning publications in Britain have long advanced the view that the BBC is biased, with the same fervour that conspiracy-minded outlets such as Breitbart and Drudge Report rail against “BIG JOURNALISM”.

But it’s notable that Trump’s second- favourite insult for disfavoured media outlets, after crooked, is “failing”. He is aware that big papers such as The New York Times are struggling for revenue now that Google and Facebook are hoovering up advertising money. He often teases CNN for losing viewers to Fox News, which has an unabashed Right-wing agenda and helped shape the agenda of the alt-Right.

Donald Trump has lambasted the “mainstream media”
REUTERS

Trump is aware that the media needs him as much as he needs them despite the rhetoric. Trump owes his recent fame to reality TV after all. “It may not be good for America but it’s damn good for us,” boasted Les Moonves, head of CBS, as he watched ratings soar during the Republican primaries. (Trump’s rivals for the candidacy fought hard for five minutes of airtime while Trump’s speeches were broadcast in their entirety.) Meanwhile, the head of CNN, Jeff Zucker, boasted that on debate nights the network received $200,000 for a 30-second ad.

“This gives Trump a tremendous amount of leverage, and he isn’t afraid to use it to make sure he is treated respectfully,” commented the veteran journalist Bill Moyers. “I can’t recall a situation in which a network was so dependent on a candidate. Usually it’s the other way around.”

David Plotz, former editor-in-chief of the liberal news site Slate.com, sees much to fear. “Can you now trust the facts that are issued by the government itself?” However, he believes that the shattering of consensus marks a partial return to the Citizen Kane-style media landscape of the early 20th century, when partial truths and billionaire agendas were no less prevalent than they are today.

Donald Trump - In pictures

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“What’s happening now is different from what has gone before, in that the types of media have changed and the ability to target separate audiences is different. But if you look at the history of the media: the notion of a shared narrative and consensus only really emerged after the Second World War, and had a lot to do with the economics of network television and monopoly newspapers. It wasn’t Trump who fragmented it — it was the economics of journalism.”

However, he does at least see some hope in Trump’s narcissism. “Trump is obsessed with media coverage. He’s more obsessed with it than almost anything else. He probably watches CNN all the time. And when he actually met the New York Times staff, he sort of sucked up to them. That’s sort of a good sign. He doesn’t want to look like a fool in front of whoever he’s talking to. That has to put restrictions on him.”

Bazelon too finds few crumbs of comfort. “I spent the week before the election interviewing college-educated women who were supporting Trump. They would often say things that were demonstrably not true but whenever I would gently introduce a different set of facts, they would say: ‘Oh you can’t trust anything in the media’. That’s frustrating. But that’s how people are letting themselves off the hook — a lot of things come across your Facebook feed and it all looks reasonably plausible, so you just believe what you want to believe.”

Still, she feels there will be no choice but to redouble and regroup. “The press is messing up in many important ways. But at the same time the free press has never been so important. We are a really important check and balance. And there’s a risk of over-reading the results. It’s still the country that voted for Barack Obama. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by a wide margin. America could still vote for someone like that again.”

She pauses and laughs. “Provided there’s another election.”

Richard Godwin: @richardjgodwin

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