'Failing to tell the central story': Reporter reveals what media misses in Trump coverage

04 January

In a recent post to his blog, veteran journalist Dan Froomkin argued that mainstream media outlets' coverage of President-elect Donald Trump has been dismal in its grasp of who Trump is on a fundamental level. He then relayed advice from another experienced reporter on how journalists can more accurately cover the incoming administration over the next four years.

On his website Press Watch, Froomkin argued that Trump should be viewed not merely as a politician, but as a "proverbial snake-oil salesman." He opined that media outlets that failed to "situate Trump’s words and actions in the context of an ongoing con" were engaging in "deception" by "failing to tell the central story." Froomkin cited Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston, who referred to the 45th and 47th president of the United States as "the greatest con artist in the history of the world."

"You’ve got to stop covering him like he’s just another politician, with a different agenda,” Johnston told Froomkin in December. “He’s a criminal and a con artist. And that has to be central to everything you cover about him.”

The longtime Huffpost and Intercept reporter said one recent example of Trump's "con artist" behavior could be seen in his interview with TIME magazine when the publication named the president-elect as its 2024 Person of the Year. In that interview, Trump notably did a sharp one-eighty on his campaign promise to lower grocery prices by saying it was "hard to bring things down once they're up."

Froomkin also pointed out that Trump loading his Cabinet full of billionaires poked holes in his populist facade. And he opined that the incoming president's administration would provide numerous opportunities for journalists to highlight the "inevitable betrayal of the suckers who voted for him."

"If you recognize that Trump is all about accruing power and money at others’ expense, then you also can see that he will inevitably let down those who counted on him to make their lives better. In reality — and in stark contrast to Joe Biden’s strongly pro-worker agenda — Trump’s actions will hurt ordinary Americans. The downtrodden will be even more trodden upon," he wrote. "A political journalist’s obligation going forward, then, is to expose the con and chronicle the betrayals. That’s the big story. That’s the job."

According to Froomkin, Trump's promise to impose new double-digit tariffs on imports from Canada, China and Mexico will also be an opportunity to illustrate to the public that the president-elect's economic populist rhetoric will only lead to higher costs for Americans. Large retailers like Walmart have already signaled that customers should be prepared for price increases. And as one small business owner told AlterNet in November, companies that manufacture their products domestically will still take a blow from the tariffs as many still have to source their raw materials imported from overseas.

"Once you acknowledge that Trump is a con artist above all else, everything becomes clearer," Froomkin wrote. "For instance, it’s no longer surprising that he has no idea how to govern. That’s not his thing. Nor does he have a clearly definable political agenda, other than seizing power and destroying enemies."

Froomkin ripped journalists at major media outlets like the New York Times' Nate Cohn for "embracing the fiction that Trump has policy views supported by analysis." He also criticized the Washington Post's Dan Balz for only offering "tiny little whiffs" of the con-artist narrative in writing that Trump's "personnel decisions raise questions about whether his true priorities square with those of the people who voted for him."

"Trump is a con artist and ordinary people are going to get hurt. That’s the all-encompassing story of the next four years," he wrote. "To the political journalists out there, I say get on it or get lost."

Click here to read Froomkin's article in its entirety.

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