For US journalism, the past four years has been a long march from both-sides-do-it stenographic reporting to a journalism of context.
This past week, as Donald Trump has amped up the election-stealing rhetoric and gutted the presidential debate format, journalism’s reset has been hurried along.
Yesterday’s presidential debate, with Trump’s truculent reluctance to accept the election result or disavow white supremacists, has all but broken the both-sides school.
Australia is slower to this reset. In the US it’s being hurried along by craft diversity, with the journalism of context school being led by journalists of colour, inspired by the call for a journalism of “moral clarity”.
Over the past week, the election-stealing story has tumbled into the centre of campaign coverage, almost behind the media’s back. Trump has long been going high on the rhetoric of electoral conspiracy, amplified on Fox News. But as Trump went high, the traditional media stayed low.
In 2016, billionaire Trump supporter Peter Thiel famously urged journalists to take Trump seriously, not literally. As the taco meme goes: “Why not both?”
As a story, the threat of election fixing is tricky for journalists: ignore the risk and look stupid (or worse, complicit), or report it and risk normalising the idea.
But last week there was an explosion, whose fuse was lit by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Barton Gellman in The Atlantic. For the first time a mainstream report explained the mechanics of possible election theft, pointing at disrupted voting and the uniquely American politicisation of the electoral process.
Normally, US politics would have shrugged, tossing it on the pile with all the other election hot-takes. But then Trump said the quiet part out loud. Asked whether he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power, he said: “We’re going to have to see what happens … get rid of the ballots and we’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.”
In crisis, the US media looked to each other for judgements of newsworthiness. This time, The New York Times was seen to stumble, publishing Trump’s comments deep inside the book. Chief political reporter Peter Baker tweeted the age-old newspaper defence: the story broke late and “print papers are still limited by old factory realities”.
But on television and online, the video went viral, forcing Republicans to push back with carefully-phrased commitments to an orderly transition.
The election-stealing story mashed into the story of Trump’s Supreme Court nomination, particularly once prominent Republican senators stressed that the appointment had to be hurried on as the overwhelmingly conservative court could be asked to determine the election.
The threat of a stolen election has morphed into a debate about media responsibilities on election night itself, throwing one more journalistic norm into flux: how (and when) it performs the fundamental task of calling an election winner.
In Australia, that responsibility has evolved over the past decade by almost unanimous consent to the ABC’s Antony Green. In the US, it’s more diffuse, shared across the Associated Press through the broadcast networks, including cable-like CNN and Murdoch’s Fox. Competitive tension between the US networks lends an imperative to be the first to call, both at a state and at a national level. (It was this tension that began the Florida-based confusion in the 2000 election.)
With a COVID-driven shift to vote by mail, results may not be known in some key states until days or weeks after election night. Worse, Trump could lead on the night, before having his lead overtaken by postal ballots. In Australia, that’s nothing new. But Americans have been trained by practice to expect the instant gratification of election night declarations.
The Associated Press has already alerted the networks that they should not expect an immediate result. Electoral officials are considering withholding partial counts. The networks are being encouraged to stress the tentative nature of any figures.
Caught in this uncertainty, journalists find themselves forced to choose between a fair election and the comfort of both sides.
Christopher, thank you for this article. I’ve read it twice to try and better understand what you think is happening in the minds of journalists.
To me, the things you describe them worrying about do not seem as important as the things they’re ignoring.
Here’s what I think is not important:
Here’s what I think is important:
I see no reason that media cannot run a debate in this way, even with a Reality TV jackanapes trying to steal the debate agenda. Such people are products of TV production, and a well-prepared TV production can rule them just as it rules every Reality TV show ever broadcast.
The reason media has not done this is not that it doesn’t know how. It appears to have lost sight of its key democratic role.
Its key role is not the peddling of influence but the collection and distribution of significant, specific, surprising and actionable political information.
This article asked whether media can cover an election this chaotic. Yet the election hasn’t really happened yet: any chaos is actually in the reporting and communications, which means it’s principally a product of media chaos, passivity and confusion.
What seems never to be mentioned is that any fraudulent voting by mail in the coming election is as likely to be perpetrated by Republicans and favor Trump.
Indeed – it’s almost as though he is inviting his supporters to do that on the basis that “the other side already do it”.
That was a funny night when Fox were still calling the Republicans as winning even though it was clear that Obama had.
And the ‘winner’ were those who didn’t watch it…
The USA must be unique amongst the OECD in not having a central/federal electoral commission.
Voter suppression is rampant because the decisions on number of polling stations, hours open, voter ID (repeatedly ruled unconstitutional but … hey) and even the counts are the responsibility of local officials down to the county level in Hogsfart, Iowa.
No point even mentioning gerrymandering.