The events which defined President Trump’s relationship with news media

By Catcher Kemmerer ‘24

This is the first segment in a three-article series. The second and third segments will be published in February and March 2021.

Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer listens as reporters field questions at a press briefing in 2017. Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org

On Monday, Dec. 14, 2020, the Electoral College officially determined President-elect Joe Biden the 46th President of the United States of America. Subsequently, on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021 - and early the next day - amidst and after a chaotic riot, members of Congress counted the Electoral College votes. Most electoral procedures have come to an end, and the conclusion of President Donald Trump’s tumultuous governance nears. Wednesday, Jan. 20 will heed an end to a markedly unusual presidency and one of the most fraught relationships between a president and prominent American news media in recent history.

“We’ve had so much, as a collective, to comprehend, that I think [understanding the Trump era has] been really hard for people,” said Eddy Binford-Ross, editor-in-chief of South Salem High School’s student newspaper, The Clypian.

When, on June 16, 2015, businessman and television personality Donald Trump announced his second campaign for president, he explained that his motivation was rooted in demonstrating his ability to succeed. In one of the most memorable moments of his first campaign speech, he attacked cable news anchors for their portrayal of this success.

“They all said, a lot of the pundits on television, well, Donald will never run, and one of the main reasons is he's private and he's probably not as successful as everybody thinks,” said Trump, in his campaign announcement speech. “So I said to myself, you know, nobody is ever going to know unless I run because I'm really proud of my success.”

ABC News and several other organizations were quick to note that Trump had never previously held public office. In fact, Trump is the only president never to have held public or elected office or served in the military. Trump later experienced criticism for draft dodging, after his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, alleged he falsely claimed that bone spurs prevented his fitness to serve in the Vietnam War after he received a diagnosis from a 1968 Queens podiatrist. Prior to the allegations, the news media had speculated Trump’s misleading diagnosis may have occurred as a favor.

As Trump gained momentum in the Republican primary, most prominent news organizations were hesitant to identify his frequent misleading claims. After Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) prevailed in the 2016 Republican Iowa caucus, Trump baselessly accused him of “fraud” and general forms of cheating, with markedly similar rhetoric to that of his ongoing accusations against supporters of President-elect Biden. Sen. Cruz has lately become one of the main proponents of 2020 election fraud claims. Especially after the 2020 election, news media have become increasingly more bold in their denouncement of Trump’s claims.

Additionally, television networks devoted considerable airtime to coverage of Trump’s novel rallies. A 2018 study found that this may have been a key factor in swinging the close general election his way.

“It wasn’t that many years ago that any presidential candidate or any candidate for office would want to [actively] reach as wide a group of people as possible,” said local Portland journalist Peter Korn. “Clearly that’s no longer what you need to do.”

Trump clearly ran a novel type of campaign, aided especially by the emergence of technology which enabled advanced mechanisms of communication. But some have expressed unhappiness with the manners in which politicians such as Trump have used this technology.

“Americans' increased reliance on social media as a primary form of newsgathering would… clearly alter the way that any president interacts with digital news spaces,” wrote local journalist Tuck Woodstock in an email interview. “However, if you look at other American political leaders, as well as political leaders globally, it's clear that the existence of new types of news technology does not justify or necessitate the way that Trump and his administration have weaponized them.”

On election night in 2016, according to polling data from Pew Research Center, Americans most received election updates from cable television. Trump’s opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, conceded the presidential race shortly after the Associated Press called the election around 2 a.m. EST. A New York Times columnist noted that cable news anchors appeared “as stunned as anyone.” Numerous polling data did not suggest that Trump would win the 2016 election.

The next day’s front-page headlines appeared only to amplify these sentiments. “In stunning upset, billionaire candidate scores White House victory,” read USA Today. “Stunning Trump win,” printed the Los Angeles Times. “Populist surge lifts Republican to upset,” the Wall Street Journal wrote.

Shortly afterward, then-President Barack Obama invited Trump to the White House and began customary procedures intended for a straightforward presidential transition. The New York Times described their preliminary meetings as “cordial,” though Obama said they had an “excellent” and “wide-ranging” conversation, and encouraged unity moving forward from that election. In a joint press conference, some media interpreted their body language as distressed, though respectful and gracious.

Though press on presidents has historically been mostly negative, media coverage of Trump has proven especially critical. Local journalists have also criticized Trump and his effect on the news media.

“He is uniquely hostile to journalists,” wrote Betsy Hammond, an education reporter at The Oregonian, in an email interview. “His willingness to say and repeat untruths is unprecedented among presidents.”

“The President villainizing the media has hurt local media,” noted Binford-Ross. “Local media has been suffering for a while, due to waning support, and… the President’s actions accelerated that. If you have more people locally who distrust the news… they’re not going to support local news outlets, which is going to force them to downsize and cut valuable reporters… and it’s kind of this vicious cycle.”

President Trump’s first few months in office

Almost immediately after President Trump took office, his White House press room became a place of perplexing controversy. On Trump’s memorable first full day in office, former White House press secretary Sean Spicer held a brief and unexpected press conference where he spread false claims with regard to the size of Trump’s inauguration crowd.

“This was the largest audience to witness an inauguration, period,” he declared then. Media outlets were quick to note that inauguration numbers were available. Later that year, Spicer stated that he didn’t “knowingly” lie, and eventually Spicer remarked in an interview that he regretted his comments.

During that press conference, Spicer also addressed massive global protests against the Trump administration which had taken place that day. The 2017 Women’s March on Washington - more commonly known as the “Women’s March” - attracted between 3.2 and 5.3 million people globally. The Women’s March event has since become annual. Although other protests have occurred since then in response to Trump’s presidency, news media coverage of the 2017 protest far outdid coverage of any of the subsequent protests, though some were notably large.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post began a database intended to track all “false or misleading claims” promoted by Trump during his presidency. In his first 100 days, the Post reported 492 claims, a number which has accelerated over the course of his presidency. The rate of misleading claims per day peaked around the 2018 midterm elections and the 2020 presidential election. The total recently surpassed 30,000, nearly doubling during Trump’s final year in office. Shortly thereafter, the Post changed its official slogan to “Democracy Dies in Darkness,” in reference to remarks made by the Post’s owner, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, in a May 2016 interview with the Post’s executive editor at a tech forum.

On Jan. 27, 2020, Trump signed an executive order indefinitely barring entry of Syrian refugees to the United States, as well as entry from several other Middle Eastern countries for 90 days. He has since introduced presidential proclamations with further restrictions and updates on the initial executive order. The United States Supreme Court and lower appeals courts have heard numerous legal challenges to the order, in most instances dismissing the challenges. Some activists and journalists implored the news media to join them in using the term “Muslim ban” to describe these executive actions, gaining wide recognition.

Ten days after his first full day in office, President Trump nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. Shortly after, customary Senate Judiciary Committee hearings began to examine his qualification for the prestigious seat. However, mainstream news media received criticism for excessively heavy coverage on a coinciding hearing by the House Intelligence Committee, which attempted to discern the extent of foreign interference in Trump’s campaign. It also received criticism for extraneously flashy headlines.

“What has become one of the many overriding factors [in journalists’ choice of subject matter], unfortunately, is how many clicks you’re going to get,” Korn noted.

After Trump’s first few weeks in office, tensions, energy and media coverage on his presidency waned slightly. In late April, his administration released Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, an Obama appointee. A May opinion column released by Stat News argued that Murthy’s dismissal “should alarm all doctors.” President-elect Biden recently announced his intent to reinstate Murthy as Surgeon General. Prior to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump administration attempted to cut resources and personnel from health-related departments and services.

As investigations into potential criminal conduct relating to apparent Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections aged - and simultaneously became heated - Trump framed them as “the greatest witch hunt in political history,” while repeatedly asking for investigation into potential ties between Hillary Clinton and Russia. It has been speculated that these requests helped prompt persistent “lock her up” chants at post-election Trump campaign rallies. In October 2020, Trump stated his “100 percent” agreement with these chants, at a Florida event planned to concentrate on protecting senior citizens.

In May 2017, President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey, a figure who had become controversial with the rise of the numerous allegations of criminal conduct in the 2016 election. In a piece which heavily discussed cable television networks’ news coverage of the firing, the New York Times observed that it produced a “bright dividing line” for news media coverage. In the work’s opening two paragraphs, it compared two analyses: that of former CNN legal journalist Jeffrey Toobin, who described it as a “grotesque abuse of power”; and that of a Fox News segment which portrayed a “sense of ‘shock and relief’” as a result of the firing.

Later that month, President Trump considered a potential United States withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord, more casually known as the Paris Agreement. On June 1, from the Rose Garden, he announced his intention to withdraw, though the Paris Agreement’s structure did not allow the United States to officially pull out until Nov. 4, 2020, the day after the 2020 presidential election concluded. President-elect Biden is expected to use executive action to rejoin the agreement.

When the agreement was signed, it generally received positive press. When Trump withdrew from the agreement, global news media coverage of climate change jumped 46% from the previous month.

On July 9, it was revealed that the President’s son, Donald Trump Jr., had reportedly met with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower New York, shortly after it appeared that Trump would win the Republican presidential primary. A source told ABC News that the Trump campaign “was not discussed.” The President later admitted that this occurred, though he argued it transpired legally. 

“Collusion is not a crime,” he wrote in an August tweet. “But that doesn’t matter because there was No Collusion.” In special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, no charges against Trump Jr. were pressed. Afterward, the media faced severe criticism for its overpromoting of the report.

Though the Mueller report ultimately concluded that no one from Trump’s campaign “conspired or coordinated” with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election, the special counsel did refute Trump’s repeated claims that the report exonerated him. Nonetheless, cable news outlets framed the report’s findings as starkly divided. Fox News ran the headline: “Mueller probe finds no proof of collusion,” while CNN was quick to mention that former Attorney General William Barr had heavily redacted the report. The Boston Herald termed the resulting uncertainty “‘collusion’ confusion.”

Even beyond the Mueller report, the Trump administration has become a magnet for alleged scandals, some valid and others not. Peter Shulman, a humanities educator at Catlin Gabel School (CGS), frequently praised the investigative journalism of the Trump era.

“I think it’s been a great era for investigative journalism,” he noted. “To me, one of the real interesting questions is what’s going to happen when Trump is gone. I think things are going to be a bit more boring.”

President Trump has frequently let go of high-ranking administration officials, many of whom he had initially appointed, in addition to figures such as Comey and Murthy. Turnover among high-ranking administration officials reached 92% as of January 2021, after several advisers resigned in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Resignations and firings had already spiked since the 2020 election, prompting various news media outlets to track departures. The President’s staff turnover is now higher than his five predecessors. Prior to his presidency, Trump hosted a reality television show in which firing was a significant premise.

“There’s an old quote from the movies, back in the 1950s,” remarked Korn. “If you come out with a movie, it doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad as long as they’re talking about it. But that never applied to politics… but Trump seems to have defied that. He wants the attention, and he gets it. Every day, he’s in three different stories in the New York Times for the last four years.”

Korn went on to ponder journalists’ responsibility in this media landscape.

“Is it the media’s responsibility… to print every little thing he says, to look into everything he or his children or his wife does?” Korn asked. “Or is there a point where the media should start saying, ‘It’s going to cost us readers, and cost us money, but we’re not just going to give him the publicity.’”

Early on July 26, Trump tweeted that “the United States Government will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.” The administration began almost entirely carrying out the policy in April 2019. Vox and Reuters immediately published in-depth pieces explaining the policy, while numerous opinion columns emerged which largely argued against it.

That August, a group of white supremacists, including several neo-Nazi militias and the Ku Klux Klan, gathered in the town of Charlottesville for the two-day Unite the Right Rally. The rally was aimed at protesting the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee, as well as the removal of Lee’s name from a local city park. Counterprotests formed, and the city gained national attention as the protests turned violent and ultimately deadly. Trump proved passive in condemning the white supremacists, addressing violence “on many sides,” and subsequently stating in a press conference, “You… had people that were very fine people, on both sides.” After receiving criticism for these comments, he responded by claiming that he had referred to the Civil War, though contextually, that does not appear likely. Trump also praised the white supremacists for having protested “very quietly.”

“It's widely acknowledged that the public, regardless of political affiliation, has become more active during the Trump presidency,” noted Woodstock. “Left, liberal, and far-right activists have all taken to the streets regularly in recent months. The media has reacted by paying more attention to the demands of both left and right-wing activists and demonstrators.”

A year later, a similar group of white supremacists commemorated the rally in a similar event dubbed the Unite the Right 2 rally. That event saw a higher police presence and far less destruction.

The Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, VA. Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org

The plethora of ensuing media attention continued for an extensive period of time. The New York Times observed that some media coverage had, itself, become news, including a still photograph which depicted the car crash which killed 32-year-old Heather D. Heyer and injured 19 others and a Vice News documentary which featured interviews with several protesters. When the Times mentioned Fox News, though talk-show hosts such as Tucker Carlson came to Trump’s defense, some Fox anchors appeared “surprised.”

The culmination of Trump’s first year in office

Liberals and progressives have long condemned Trump as dim-witted, though such arguments grew especially louder as Trump turned his naked eye directly upon a milestone solar eclipse later that month. Some columnists relayed social media posts which described the situation as simultaneously hysterical and frustrating. The New York Times labeled it “metaphor.” According to video obtained by The Guardian, Trump only briefly observed the eclipse in this fashion before others below his balcony warned him not to look.

Shortly afterwards, Trump announced his first presidential pardon, forgiving controversial former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio of a misdemeanor and a jail sentence for contempt of court. However, though inconsequential, he could not extract Arpaio’s guilty verdict after arguing that Arpaio’s age and long record of “selfless public service” should excuse it. 

Following the Arpaio pardon, local Arizona and national news media came to a consensus that Arpaio had become one of the most loathed law enforcement officials in the nation, and the editorial board of Phoenix-based newspaper AZCentral ran an opinion column which criticized Arpaio for his cost on local taxpayers. Arpaio ran unsuccessfully for election to his former Sheriff’s office in 2019, after losing a Republican primary for an Arizona Senate seat in 2018. The general election for that seat was eventually called for moderate Democrat Kyrsten Sinema.

Early in September, the Trump administration formally ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Mainstream news media narrated the program’s end with a substantial amount of personal profiles relevant to the administration’s action. A federal judge recently reinstated the program.

That fall, as San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick - and later, other National Football League (NFL) athletes - began kneeling in protest for the duration of customary pre-game national anthems, Trump escalated national attention on the matter with inflammatory comments against Kaepernick, once even demeaning Kaepernick as a “son of a b**ch.” He later suggested that the protesters “maybe shouldn’t be in the country.” Kaepernick eventually opted out of his contract; however, in June 2020, Trump stated support for Kaepernick’s potential return to the NFL. The NFL website ran several features on the matter, including one from June 2020 which detailed Kaepernick’s path back to the league.

In a case filed on Dec. 1, 2017, Trump’s former head National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, pled guilty to making “materially false statements and omissions” during an interview with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in relation to its investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 elections. An editor at CNN Politics argued Flynn’s indictment was an “absolutely massive problem” for the Trump administration. In spring 2020, as Flynn sought to retract the plea, the New York Times published an opinion column which sought to remind its readers of the plea’s significance. In late Nov. 2020, Trump pardoned Flynn, receiving backlash from the American judiciary, Democratic politicians and news media alike.

Much of the administration’s final actions in 2017 rolled back established environmental regulations, including an 85% slash to Utah’s Bears Ears National Monument, for development prospects and the removal of climate change from a list of national security threats. Most available reporting on environmental topics originated from organizations with center or center-left editorial boards, per the AllSides media evaluation platform.

Ultimately, the journalists and educators contacted by CatlinSpeak expressed mostly negative feelings about President Trump’s relationship with the news media. However, they appeared to have mostly expected these impressions.

“I think [the president’s relationship with the news media] is less surprising than disappointing,” Binford-Ross said. “We’ve seen even before Trump took office that freedom of the press has been severely limited.”

Shulman agreed. “I think it’s all gone exactly the way that it did when he was running,” he remarked. “I would say his attacks on media are exactly what he was doing before he became President… I don’t think any of it is surprising.

Woodstock noted, however, that any analysis of news media should be produced cautiously.

“‘The news media’ should never be viewed homogeneously because it's made up of thousands of individuals making individual decisions about individual stories every day,” Woodstock wrote.

Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org

This is the first segment in a three-article series. The second and third segments will be published in February and March 2021.