Donald Trump effectively secured the Republican nomination for president this week and many in the media are asking themselves: How could we let this happen?
The billionaire businessman barreled his way through the primary, knocking out more than a dozen current and former governors and senators, and it is widely believed that he did so by seizing the zeitgeist of disaffected and discouraged voters. Yet, big voices in the national press believe his success is their failure.
“The Republican horse race is over and journalism lost,” wrote New York Times media columnist Jim Rutenberg on Thursday. “In the end, you have to point the finger at national political journalism, which has too often lost sight of its primary directives in this election season: to help readers and viewers make sense of the presidential chaos; to reduce the confusion, not add to it; to resist the urge to put ratings, clicks and ad sales above the imperative of getting it right.”
Liberal Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus sang a similar tune. “We underperformed our constitutionally protected role,” she wrote on Tuesday, after Trump’s closest rival, Ted Cruz, withdrew from the race. “Sure, every campaign cycle features hand-wringing over the primacy of the horse race over the substance. This one feels demonstrably worse.”
She said that the news media were “mesmerized by the bright, shiny object that is Donald Trump” and “collectively failed to plumb his gaping lack of policy knowledge and proposals.”
“Our role is, or should be, to provide the information essential for voters to make an informed decision,” Marcus wrote. “We fell short.”
The debate about how much Trump was hurt or helped by the media has lasted as long as the GOP primary and continues. Like no other candidate, he was able to capture the national media’s attention, seemingly at will, by way of his showmanship and ability to court controversy to his advantage.
It was a skill that kept the cameras on Trump, eating up any spotlight that might make its way to other candidates.
Much of that media attention was, however, negative. Journalists and commentators have labeled Trump a racist, xenophobe and chauvinist.
Still, journalists saw a correlation between Trump’s ascent to the nomination and the news coverage he earned.
“Congrats, fellow media. We did it!” said New York Times politics reporter Nick Confessore in a sarcastic Twitter message Tuesday night, when it became apparent that Trump had vanquished his remaining threat.
Congrats, fellow media. We did it!
— Nick Confessore (@nickconfessore) May 4, 2016
Fox News anchor Chris Wallace on Wednesday bemoaned the news media’s supposed hand in Trump’s success.
“I think we were followers not leaders in this,” he said on Fox’s “The Five” roundtable show. “In other words, I think that the reason we put him on [TV] so much, and I think we did, all of us, whether it was cable, whether it was broadcast, all of us put him on too much. I think to a large degree it was because every time we did, it spiked the ratings. We were in a sense following what the ratings were which was the response of the public. Having said that, the fact that we put him on so much, it did crowd out, take a lot of the oxygen away from the other candidates. But I think at least the initial impulse was, if you put him on, you get ratings.”
