5 Things podcast: Can the media cover Trump responsibly?

 On Today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: In the run up to the 2016 election, the media breathlessly followed Trump’s every move. Everything Trump was always on. It’s estimated that the candidate earned somewhere north of 2 billion dollars in free media coverage during that time. For the networks, former president Trump was the Midas Touch, netting them much needed advertising dollars. But some have argued that in obsessively covering Trump, the networks did a disservice to democracy. Last week, CNN hosted a Town Hall with Trump in New Hampshire that brings the question top of mind once again. CNN has subsequently come under heavy criticism for hosting someone who is well known to spread lies and disinformation and that it would be impossible to fact check him live. Can the mainstream media cover Trump responsibly in his 2024 run? 

We're speaking with Jay Rosen, NYU professor of journalism and author and editor of the blog PressThink, and Ingrid Jaques, conservative opinion columnist for USA TODAY, to get their takes.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Luciana Lopez:

Hello and welcome to 5 Things. I'm Luciana Lopez, Deputy Managing Editor for Politics at USA TODAY. It's Sunday, May 14th, 2023.

In the run-up to the 2016 election, the media breathlessly followed Trump's every move. Everything Trump was always on. It's estimated that the candidate earned somewhere north of $2 billion in free media coverage during that time. For the networks, former President Trump was the Midas touch, netting them much needed advertising dollars. But some have argued that in obsessively covering Trump, the networks did a disservice to democracy.

Last week, CNN hosted a town hall with Trump in New Hampshire that brings the question top of mind once again. That network has subsequently come under heavy criticism for hosting someone who's well-known to spread lies and disinformation that it would be impossible to fact check live. Yet as the GOP front-runner with a staunch base of support, candidate Trump absolutely needs to be covered. The question is, can the mainstream media cover him responsibly?

Later in this episode, we'll speak with conservative columnist, Ingrid Jacques. But first I'm joined by Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at New York University, who also writes and edits the blog PressThink. Thank you for joining me today.

Jay Rosen:

It's my pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.

Luciana Lopez:

Last week, CNN hosted a town hall with Donald Trump and Kaitlan Collins. What happened?

Jay Rosen:

CNN programmed an event that I don't think they thought through very well. The premise of it was that Donald Trump, leading candidate for Republican nomination in 2024 would face tough questions from Kaitlan Collins, up-and-coming CNN anchor, and CNN would be in the position of hearing from the Republican Party as it were, while also trying to ground the event in known facts, because that's what journalism is and that's what CNN says it does.

And the reason I say that it wasn't very well thought through is that Donald Trump not only doesn't care about factuality, but he rolls right over it and he benefits from the tension and the controversy and the dismay that some observers have and the delight that other observers had in this sort of making a circus out of the issue. And so while Kaitlan Collins, the CNN moderator did what she could to say, "But Mr. President, that's not true," or, "You said this, but it's false," or, "The testimony in Congress was contrary to what you're saying," she tried, but Trump has a political style in which what actually happened is really not that important despite CNN's efforts to make it important.

And then, when you add the fact that the crowd was very pro-Trump and composed of Republican voters who found him not only inspirational and right on the mark for what they're looking for in a presidential candidate, but enjoyed the tension between the moderator and the candidate and laughed many times when Kaitlan Collins failed to bring him into the world of facts and truth. So you put it all together and it's a stunning and sobering event.

Luciana Lopez:

Let's talk about that audience a little bit. You talked about some of the laughter we heard. We also heard cheers. One particularly notable moment in which that happened was they brought up the jury decision this week that found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation in the case brought by E. Jean Carroll. That was indeed a sobering moment. I can imagine particularly a lot of people of all genders who have been victims of sexual abuse might have really felt something in that moment.

What does it say that we had a major presidential candidate repeating some of the same things on air for which he was just found liable?

Jay Rosen:

Yeah, there is a time in American politics when the fact that he was in this trial at the beginning would've ended their political career, and we're way beyond that now. And for that to be celebrated and to be transmitted by CNN is shocking in one way, but in another way it's a good portrait for where our party politics are right now. It's way beyond the surface level of just fact checking, and it was like live television from the culture war.

Luciana Lopez:

Is there a way for anyone to do a live event with Donald Trump, with someone who has such a different relationship with the truth than so many other people, shall we say, is there a way to do a live event with him that wouldn't go this way?

Jay Rosen:

No. There's no way. If you are comfortable misinforming your audience in a live setting, then you can have as your guest Donald Trump. If you would rather not misinform your audience about not just one or two things, but about many things, then you can't do it live. What you do is you interview the president, you edit it, you make sure that his point of view is clear and he gets his "message across", and you are wary of passing on bad information. All that can be done through editing. That's what television news people do.

So while you can't do it live, it doesn't mean that you pretend Donald Trump doesn't exist or that you close your mind to what he has to say or that you shut off the information flow from him and his camp. You don't need to do any of those things. You just have to understand that in a live setting, all the power shifts to him for several reasons.

Now, if you have another kind of goal, which is to show that we're a network that listens to both sides, then perhaps you can say this event was effective. But in that case, you have to say we're comfortable with passing on lies and misinformation to our audience because we know that's going to happen.

Luciana Lopez:

So you just said none of this is new. We've seen a lot of these behaviors from Donald Trump before. Has the media learned anything about how to cover him?

Jay Rosen:

It's a good question. One indication that CNN has not learned came yesterday when in the morning, cnn.com ran this news article, which tried to suggest that he was going to be running a far more traditional campaign in this cycle, and that he would try to start appealing to a much broader range of voters. And then he in the evening came out and demolished that whole story, showing CNN to be very credulous in accepting this message basically from the advisors who maybe hoped that Trump would change.

And so, yeah, it's a known thing. All of these problems have been there for years. They have been spotlighted in very specific terms by journalists themselves for years. And so we can conclude from this that CNN doesn't want to change. They want the world to be as it was because then their tools and their culture can still work by helping themselves to more Trump.

Luciana Lopez:

Jay, thank you so much for joining me.

Jay Rosen:

Thanks.

Luciana Lopez:

A new tablet for covering Trump is tough to imagine. I'm joined now by Ingrid Jacques, a conservative opinion columnist for USA TODAY to get her take on the issue.

Ingrid, thank you for joining me.

Ingrid Jacques:

Thanks for having me.

Luciana Lopez:

Ingrid. I read your piece this morning about supporting Trump as the GOP nominee is a sign that the Republican Party is kind of stuck in the past. Let's set that aside for now, because the reality is Trump is the front-runner in polls that we've seen so far. Whether he's live at a CNN town hall or whether he's on a debate stage, the fact is the media has a duty to cover him. So how do we do that responsibly?

Ingrid Jacques:

Well, I mean that's always been the question with covering Donald Trump, and I think it definitely continues to be the challenge. And you're right, he's still the front-runner among GOP primary voters. But in a lot of ways, I think it's positive. The more Americans who can see him for really who he is, what he stands for, the lies that he keeps promulgating, I think people need to hear that for themselves. He's not going to stop his key supporters from finding his messages, but I think a broader swath of the country needs to hear it too.

Luciana Lopez:

With this responsibility that we have to cover him, how do we balance that with the fact that Trump says untruths, that he says things that have been debunked, things that have been shot down in a court of law? How do we balance that need?

Ingrid Jacques:

I mean, Trump's not going to stop saying those things. He's just not. So as the media, we can keep pointing out when he has said things that have proven to be untrue.

But I thought it was really interesting to contrast between the questions that the host Kaitlan Collins asked Trump and the questions that the audience, which was comprised of primary voters in New Hampshire asked. Their questions were much more directed about current problems and the future, whether that's the economy, inflation, abortion.

What we learned if you asked Trump about 2020 and January 6th, he's going to say the same stuff. And I'm personally tired of rehashing the past. He's not going to change his mind clearly. I think much of the country is ready to move on and talk about other things. And if he remains stuck in the past, I think that might start pushing Republican voters more away from him.

I think there are a lot of Republicans who are looking for someone different who is still strong on the issues that they care about, but I think there are several other good candidates who could do the same thing and do it better.

Luciana Lopez:

Are the media as a whole asking Trump the right questions?

Ingrid Jacques:

Personally, I would like to see him pushed more on what would he do if he were elected in 2024? What would a second term of the Trump presidency look like? And really get down into as much as you could with Trump, try to get down into some specifics. The country, even most Republicans are ready to move on from the last election. They don't really want to talk about it anymore. I hear this from a lot of my friends and sources. So I think the media would be smart to not ignore Trump, but push him on the issues of today.

Luciana Lopez:

Is there a difference in how some of the more conservative media outlets can or should cover Donald Trump? Do they have different obligations or responsibilities?

Ingrid Jacques:

I think Trump definitely gravitated to Fox and some of these other outlets in the past because when he was president, I think he felt they would give him the most fair representation. It was a very common thought among republicans, conservatives that the mainstream media was not portraying him fairly. And I think that drove a lot of people away from those outlets and more to Fox or Breitbart or wherever else they went. That's been damaging and contributed to this real divide that we see in the country today.

Luciana Lopez:

Ingrid, thank you so much for joining us.

Ingrid Jacques:

Thanks, Luciana. It was great talking to you.

Luciana Lopez:

Thanks to Jay Rosen and Ingrid Jacques for joining me. We're grateful to Shannon Rae Green and Alexis Gustin for the production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this podcast by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow with another episode of 5 Things.