Adam Serwer has written an important piece that I easily could have written myself. I was struck by the examples he used, because most of them are the examples I would have used. It’s important to understand the incentives the media has, both commercial and, more indisputably legitimate, professional.
Judith Miller’s coverage of Iraq’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction is an excellent example. Her editors were no doubt very pleased with her for cultivating sources very close to Vice-President Cheney who were willing to speak to her both on the record and on background. It was her job to win those contacts and she succeeded at it magnificently. That those sources used her as a conduit for misinformation was an occupational risk, and burning her sources or being too openly skeptical of what they told her could have lost her her hard-won access. I’ll defend Judy Miller this far and no further. But I want to point out that there will be new reporters whose job it is to get close to Vice-President Mike Pence, and others who will want to get sources high up in the CIA and Pentagon, and others who will want to speak with Trump’s inner circle and chief of staff. These reporters will be bullshitted. They always are to some degree, but this administration will set a new land speed record for bullshit.
The media is feeling chastened no less than the Democrats. The feeling that not enough attention was paid to rural America is broadly felt, from pollsters to left-wing politicians to the editors of our major news publications and television stations. A desire not to further alienate this group of Trump-supporting citizens is growing, with some validity, and every criticism of the Trump administration will be considered through that commercial and political lens.
Serwer is also correct to point out that leaks have never been more difficult to pull off, as the government is willing to pursue leakers with real aggression and they have the tools to monitor electronic communications retroactively. Trump will probably use these tools with more zeal than even the Obama administration, and that will make getting a corrected record of what’s going on harder than ever.
There are three reasons to be hopeful about the media coverage of this president though. The first is that this administration will enter office with close to zero credibility with the press corp. This is for both cultural reasons (reasons that led virtually no newspapers to endorse Trump) and for the experience the media just went through covering the campaign. The second is that the media is still chastened from their failures during the Bush administration. So, their guilt about missing the election result and their fear of alienating Trump’s supporters will be tempered by their memory of the Iraq War and the Bush Era generally. Finally, the blogs and social media were not a force in the first term of the Bush administration, which allowed the media to operate unchallenged. That is no longer the case.
It’s true that the media is not prepared to cover this administration, but it’s also true that they’re better prepared (and we’re better prepared) than they were for Bush and Cheney.
