Since the 2016 election, the media has blatantly failed to build a solid structure around the nature of our American President, Donald Trump. Journalists today are faced now more than ever with advertising administration, which has created an illusion of journalistic improvements, which has conducted the ‘fake news’ stigma.
It all started when the media underestimated Trump’s electoral success. It seems that journalists were drawn to the story that could make a great fiction tale, but forgot to focus on the reality of it all. The important knowledge that these journalists are supposed to report on should investigate and question policies that we all don’t have easy access to. The media also relies on outlets such as Wikileaks that target journalists who are prone to gossip and ‘inside scoops’.
The media has also failed to get to the bottom of the Trump and Russia saga. Potentially, the interference with the 2016 election could be the biggest political story in modern day society. The public seems to have lost the thread regarding the coverage on Trump and his Russian contacts – mainly because Trump officials seem prone to lying… which somehow is expected from societies’ perception of a President – or politician in general. On the other end, Russia, is completely in the dark, making it that much more difficult to investigate.
Since his inauguration, the analysis on Trump’s political identity has only become worse. This idea that Trump is literally ‘crazy’ or ‘unstable’ is weak and praised by the media. Trump resembles a relatively average person who is defensive, unfocused and unable to admit that they are wrong. What Trump does represent is someone who is very unfit for the presidency but not someone who is crazy. The craziness lies in how Trump wound up in office. It’s believable that past Presidents shared similar qualities characteristically as Trump, and that they too were similarly arrogant. Not lunatics. Political history gets nasty, yes… but also complex. Pointing fingers, however, isn’t and is much easier than the truth.
Images on social media that have gone viral and painted Trump as less popular as he is become so blown out of proportion that is it creates a barricade from the truth. For example, one image of a protestor at a Trump rally with one sign could go viral and make people think that it is much more significant than it actually is. This is how the journalists failed to accurately cover the 2016 election. They underestimated Trump’s popularity, and now that he is in office, the media needs to not make the same mistake.
It seems that the media has a new way of crying wolf when it comes to Trump’s antics as President, which has allowed society to feel abnormal and the normal. This has led us to quick trigger panics. For example, the reaction to the administration’s dismissal of 46 US attorneys caused panic in the media, despite the dismissal of US attorneys has been standard practice since the 1990s.
America is in many ways avoids the biggest issues that are happening in the world around us. This includes the rise of illegal immigration, the trade shock on Chinese imports, the aftermath economic shock of the financial crisis and the ego shock of disappointing outcomes in the middle East. Instead, we focus on Trump’s daily controversies and the winners and losers of political parties. Which, in a way, isolates Trump and allows us all to treat him with the same conditions that brought him to power in the first place.
