media vs. Trump – USA Gov Policy

The New York Analysis of Policy and Government concludes its two-part examination of how deeply biased journalism has come.

Examples of bias against candidate Trump were abundant. Just a few examples: Public Integrity describes:

“New Yorker television critic Emily Nussbaum, a newly minted Pulitzer Prize winner, spent the Republican National Convention pen-pricking presidential nominee Donald Trump as a misogynist shyster running an ‘ugly and xenophobic campaign.’ What Nussbaum didn’t disclose in her dispatches: she contributed $250 to Democrat Hillary Clinton in April…Carole Simpson, a former ABC “World News Tonight” anchor who in 1992 became the first African-American woman to moderate a presidential debate, is not moderate about her personal politics: the current Emerson College distinguished journalist-in-residence and regular TV news guest has given Clinton $2,800.” The vast majority of journalist who supported either candidate supported Clinton, according to Public Integrity. “In all, people identified in federal campaign finance filings as journalists, reporters, news editors or television news anchors — as well as other donors known to be working in journalism — have combined to give more than $396,000 to the presidential campaigns of Clinton and Trump, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis. Nearly all of that money — more than 96 percent — has benefited Clinton: About 430 people who work in journalism have, through August, combined to give about $382,000 to the Democratic nominee, the Center for Public Integrity’s analysis indicates.”

Fox News has generally been viewed as more conservative outlet, and was regularly criticized by former President Obama. In the aftermath of the 2016 campaign, it reported:

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A Media Research Center report provides an extraordinary example of bias: “Sneaky Russian influence in American politics is a huge story if it involves Republicans/Donald Trump, but a non-story if it involves Democrats/Hillary Clinton… The Hill published new information about Russian efforts to infiltrate the American uranium industry, including $31.3 million in payments to the Clinton Foundation, as well as a huge speaking fee delivered to Bill Clinton personally, while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State. In eight days, the network evening news coverage of this story amount to a mere 20 seconds on ABC’s World News Tonight…But Bill Clinton’s big payday has generated ZERO network news coverage this week, and only a single reference on ABC’s This Week back in 2015, when the book Clinton Cash first disclosed the potential scandal.In fact, from April 2015 through [October 24] the Clinton/Uranium/Russia story has been granted only 3 minutes, 21 seconds of evening news coverage — less than one-half of one percent of the coverage doled out just this year to the conspiracy theories surrounding Trump and Russia…Combined, the three evening newscasts have aired a total of 5,015 minutes of coverage of the Trump administration since Inauguration Day, which means the Russia story alone has comprised almost exactly one-fifth of all Trump news this year.

Some media notables have spoken up. The Washington Times reported that “Journalist Bob Woodward of Watergate fame has some advice for his younger peers — stop “binge drinking the anti-Trump Kool-Aid.”

Far too often, the argument over biased media is framed in terms of Democrat vs. Republican, liberal vs. conservative. Lately, it has also included pro-Trump vs. “Never Trumpers.” That misses the point entirely. Journalists are human, bound to have personal biases and developed points of view. What distinguishes the current state of the profession is the phenomenon of so many being of the same political mindset.

A vigorous and independent media is vital to the success of a free people. An abundance of perspectives and, most importantly, a devotion to truth, regardless of one’s own political biases, is desperately needed. It is a need that is going largely unfilled by many media outlets.

The New York Analysis of Policy and Government examines how deeply biased journalism has become in this two-part series.

What is the appropriate response to the biased and sloppy journalism that diligently sought to overturn the results of the 2016 election, and which ignored the offenses of the elected officials and appointees whom they supported?

Recent revelations have been truly extraordinary: It was Hillary Clinton’s campaign that “colluded” with Moscow. The Charges against the Trump campaign appear to be little more than an attempt to coverup unlawful surveillance by the Obama Administration. The Justice Department has apologized for its harassment, under the former President, of the Tea Party. The FBI, under James Comey, squashed the Clinton email investigation. The Democrat National Committee inappropriately “fixed” the primary process to ensure that Bernie Sanders lost. In terms of the politicians and bureaucrats involved, Congress will investigate, the wheels of justice will turn. But what of a media that intentionally or negligently propagated falsehoods?

A study by the Pew Research Center found that “Allegations about Russia and the 2016 election tied to Trump and his administration, as well as the White House’s relationship with Moscow, dominated stories on U.S.-Russia relations…, only about one-in-ten stories (11%) delivered an overall positive assessment of the [trump] administration’s words or actions. Four times as many (44%) offered a negative assessment, while the remaining 45% were neither positive nor negative.” In total, the early coverage of the Trump Administration by the media was 62% negative versus only 5% positive. That contrast sharply with the coverage of former President Obama’s coverage, which was 42% positive and only 20% negative.

A similar result was found by a Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy study, which noted that “Trump has received unsparing coverage for most weeks of his presidency, without a single major topic where Trump’s coverage, on balance, was more positive than negative, setting a new standard for unfavorable press coverage of a president.”
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Anthony Fisher reported for Reason about the coverage of the events surrounding President Trump’s inauguration. “One journalist…was Natasha Lennard, who penned a popular article for The Nation wherein she writes about how she actively participated in the ‘anti-capitalist, anti-fascist bloc’ which rejected ‘polite protest’ in favor of tactics such as ‘human blockades, smash[ing] corporate windows, trash-can fires, burning [a] limousine…”

Is it intentional bias or something else that has divorced accuracy from media reports? Politico notes that the outcome of the 2016 election, which most of the media was convinced would be a landslide victory for Clinton was “an outcome that arrived not just as an embarrassment for the press but as an indictment. In some profound way, the election made clear, the national media just doesn’t get the nation it purportedly covers…” The website cites FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, who pointed out that the ideological clustering in top newsrooms led to groupthink. ‘As of 2013, only 7 percent of [journalists] identified as Republicans,’ Silver wrote in March, chiding the press for its political homogeneity. Just after the election, presidential strategist Steve Bannon savaged the press on the same point but with a heartier vocabulary. ‘The media bubble is the ultimate symbol of what’s wrong with this country,’ Bannon said. ‘It’s just a circle of people talking to themselves who have no f***** idea what’s going on.”

The Federalist, in a Feburary 2017 article by Daniel Payne, reported that “16 fake news stories reporters have run since Trump won…Since at least Donald Trump’s election, our media have been in the grip of an astonishing, self-inflicted crisis…there is no greater enemy of the American media than the American media. They did this to themselves…day after day, even hour after hour, the media continue to broadcast, spread, promulgate, publicize, and promote fake news on an industrial scale. It has become a regular part of our news cycle, not distinct from or extraneous to it but a part of it, embedded within the news apparatus as a spoke is embedded in a bicycle wheel… Why are our media so regularly and so profoundly debasing and beclowning themselves, lying to the public and sullying our national discourse—sometimes on a daily basis? How has it come to this point?”

The Report concludes tomorrow.

Quick Analysis

Ukraine’s Frozen Conflict

As we approach winter in the northern hemisphere, the war in Ukraine is beginning to resemble a “frozen conflict” from many perspectives. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently told the media he hopes the war will end faster once President-elect Trump takes over in January. Opinions in Moscow, however, differ from that of the Ukrainian leader. Russian President Vladimir Putin argues that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) needs to exclude Ukraine from joining in “exchange” for peace. If it does not, he says, then no end to the war is in sight. So far there is no Christmas solution. Several NATO countries, according to Vladimir Socor of the Jamestown Foundation, are tentatively considering “coalitions-of-the-willing” to provide security for Ukraine outside of the formal NATO framework. There is, however, no collective mechanism today under which such an arrangement is viable. According to the NATO Charter, while Ukraine is a NATO partner country, it may not join as a full member since it has not fulfilled the requirements for membership. That has not stopped NATO and allies from continuing “to provide Ukraine with unprecedented levels of support, helping to uphold its fundamental right to self-defence,” according to the organization. Socor says that keeping Ukraine out of NATO will not advance peace with Russia. Waiting for a peace settlement, he suggests, would only serve to encourage Moscow to continue the war indefinitely. Although the Biden Administration officially withdrew its support for Ukrainian membership in 2021, NATO maintains an “open door” policy toward membership-seeking countries. The current White House position led the way for European states to oppose Ukraine’s membership saying that a decision should be delayed until “conditions are met.” Biden pushed for changing “open door” to a “bridge” metaphor. It is not intended as an across-the-board NATO policy and has been implemented in the past on a case-by-case basis, says Socor. “The alliance’s open-door policy was not fully insulated from Russia’s non-statutory blocking power, and NATO-aspirant countries’ path toward membership was not always irreversible.” Russia has successfully blocked states like Georgia from joining, first in 2008 and again after the war in Ukraine began in 2014. Russia recognizes the value add of Ukraine to NATO is enormous and that Kyiv has a better case than some other nations. Putin’s invasion was, in part, intended to foreclose that option. By 2021, Moscow was pushing hard to maximize its war objectives, which included further annexations of Ukrainian territory. A main goal for Putin was, and is, to ensure there is no Ukraine left to join NATO. As President-elect Trump prepares to assume office in January, he is faced with the historical challenges presented by the war. Post-conflict security guarantees were the center of several proposals made during the 2023 military stalemate. The incoming Trump Administration has yet to outline how it intends to handle the Russia-Ukraine war. Analysts in Washington believe that the new Administration will expect its European allies to guarantee the majority of Ukraine’s security needs. As we approach 2025, several European nations have acknowledged that they do not view Ukraine as eligible for NATO membership as it would draw the organization into the middle of the conflict. Others want to wait until the war is over or pending a “peace” settlement before considering Ukrainian membership. Socor reports that some “influential voices” are suggesting that “Kyiv should join NATO after “freezing” the war along a stable armistice line, de facto accepting Ukraine’s partition, with NATO security guarantees applying de jure to the government-controlled territory only.” This would mean starting accession talks soon with the actual talks to commence only after a ceasefire is in place. Trump arrives in Washington at a time when Putin’s hybrid strategies of war in Ukraine have eviscerated commonly-held differences between war and peace. “Absent a political consensus in NATO over Ukrainian membership, certain European allies, including France’s President Emmanuel Macron, are holding informal consultations about post-conflict security guarantees to Kyiv by NATO members outside of NATO’s framework,” according to the Jamestown Foundation. The Biden Administration downplayed the discussions on possible forms of military assistance and defense industry cooperation by sending only an Assistant Secretary of State. For a European peace to hold the Trump Administration would need to formally extend the United States’ nuclear deterrence to Ukraine. Options under discussion in Europe include a “coalition of the resolute” to deploy forces to Ukraine as part of a possible armistice package, deterring further Russian attacks, says Secor. European officials are also debating, without any agreement, whether its military forces could perform non-combat logistical roles to free Ukrainian forces to fight. None of the possible courses of action has moved forward as all eyes are waiting on the incoming Trump Administration for clues about its intended level of support for a NATO framework and other non-NATO proposals. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.