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So far, Donald Trump’s campaign has demonstrated that the daily U.S. media tend to respect a person with lots of money in the same way as a person with several PhDs or election to high office. In this campaign, media have repeated the candidate’s most outrageous statements without comment. They accorded his lengthy checkered past of bankruptcies, divorces, and public tantrums the same weight as the controversy about Hillary Clinton using a potentially insecure email server.
On the other hand, even seasoned cynical editors and reporters can reach a sticking point. There’s a palpable moment when the tide turns. George W. Bush seemed made of Teflon during his first term as president, even as his appointees destroyed essential branches of government and the U.S. economy sank underneath the Iraq war. The New York Times published his falsehoods about Iraq’s military capacity as banner headlines. Bush managed to get re-elected in 2004.
Then came Hurricane Katrina, which revealed just how much damage Bush’s wrecking crew had done to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). As Bush reassured the nation that FEMA was on the job, major news media arrived in ruined, desolated New Orleans, to find that no help was on the way at all. CNN’s Anderson Cooper stared into the camera and said, “This body has been lying here in a puddle in the street for two days. There are no emergency services in New Orleans. For God’s sake, this is America!”
Bush’s free ride in the media was over. Newspapers consistently published the most unflattering photos they could find. TV stations instituted “Reality Check” desks and regularly refuted Bush’s statements. Reporters dug into his family members’ lives — and Trump’s children have had little scrutiny until now, although he has made his family members part of his campaign team. Cartoonists lampooned him as a monkey. The media turned against him. But their readjustment came too late. Bush had already been re-elected.
Trump, however, turned the corner before voting day. On September 15, he left the news media on his plane and sped off to give his speech before they could cover him. “An enraged press corps turned on Donald Trump Thursday night after the Republican nominee plowed ahead with a speech New Hampshire before they arrived — then mocked them from the stage,” Politico reported.
On September 16, Trump lured news media to his new hotel by promoting a “major announcement” about his presidential campaign. The networks dispatched camera crews and pre-empted regular programming.
“Just seconds after Donald Trump appeared at his new hotel in Washington on Friday, it dawned on many of the reporters in the room and others watching the live coverage on every cable news channel that they had been conned,” Robert Mackey wrote in The Intercept. Reporters started tweeting comments like, “Trump starts off speech: ‘Nice hotel. Under budget and ahead of schedule.'”
Mackey continued: “One after the other, reporters for major American news organizations complained on Twitter that Trump had gamed the media, ensuring live coverage of an event that, for at least 20 minutes of speeches by military men singing his praises, looked and sounded like a do-over convention he had staged for himself.”
When Trump finally did make his statement about where Barack Obama was born, the media (apart from Fox News) responded with open derision — in their reports, not just on Twitter. Associated Press started their report by calling Trump “the chief promoter of a lie” and noted that as soon as he acknowledged President Obama’s U.S. birth, “He then immediately peddled another false conspiracy theory.”
CNN anchors were furious. Kate Bolduan said, “It’s false. … Donald Trump in 2011, he made this his signature issue. No one has gone as far as Donald Trump on the birther issue.”
Trump has tweeted journalists since the start of his campaign, stooping so low as to parody a reporter living with cerebral palsy. Until now, journalists on the campaign planes at least have tried to maintain some semblance of respect for the candidate in what they report. However, using a campaign news conference to promote a new hotel is too transparent a ploy even for cynical, seasoned pundits.
My guess is that Trump has had his Katrina moment. The mainstream media are going to start sandbagging him at every turn, and the U.S. public is about to reveal how much attention they actually pay to the news they see and read.
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