President Trump’s request for network airtime Tuesday night to make his case for the border wall has triggered a vibrant debate in journalism circles about how to cover public remarks of a president given his propensity to spread falsehoods.
Initially, there was some debate about whether networks should cover the speech at all. Eventually, they all agreed, and they will also cover a Democratic response delivered by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
But another option has emerged that could resurface even if it isn’t employed tonight. What if networks aired Trump speeches but only on tape delay? That would give them time to research his statements and present audiences with more thorough on-air fact checks, either during the speech or immediately after.
Whatever course networks decide to pursue toward Trump, whether tonight or down the road, they should be prepared to apply it consistently to future presidents and make this the new standard for covering such political speeches. It cannot be a one-off policy that only applies to Trump.
Sure, some would argue that while all presidents lie or distort the truth, Trump has been more brazen about it. But news organizations cannot use such an arbitrary metric to set policy, as defining some sort of threshold of brazenness would inevitably introduce bias. Is it the number of falsehoods? Is it the magnitude of falsehoods? Who determines when a lie is significant enough? Is any sort of sanction cumulative? Is it only applied to speeches on certain subjects that the politician has been known to lie about? Are bans from live coverage lifetime bans? Or is it more the equivalent of being put in a penalty box?
Absent a consistent standard, it’s easy to see how networks could find it difficult to achieve any sense of fairness or semblance of objectivity. A floating standard would also make media vulnerable to social media pressure campaigns. At first, it may be Trump who’s given special treatment. But one can imagine, for instance, conservatives taking to social media to argue that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s four Pinocchios mean that her speeches can’t be covered live and some network executives feeling they need to listen to the complaints to avoid charges of bias. That, in turn, would provoke liberal outrage about “false equivalence” and “both siderism.”
Given the proliferation of new forms of media, there’s a legitimate argument to be made that networks should disrupt the traditional model for covering political speeches. Trump can take to Twitter and get his unvarnished message out to his more than 57 million followers. He can post a livestream of any speech to his account, or to Facebook, or to the White House page. And lots of other websites, big and small, have the ability to embed that livestream on their own sites. It’s a far cry from a time when a president was dependent on three major networks to get his message across. So I’m willing to accept the idea that maybe the rules should change.
Maybe networks should stop covering presidential speeches in the traditional way and introduce new policies such as a tape delay and more fact-checking. But if they go that route, it should be applied to all such political speeches, or else the media will continue to lose the trust of more Americans across the political spectrum.
