Anti-Trump Editorials and the Information Politics of Journalism

• In Event: Journalism and Journalists

Abstract

In mid-August, 2018, in an effort spearheaded by the Boston Globe, hundreds of newspapers around the US published editorials defending journalism against attacks by President Trump that characterized the press as “the enemy of the people.” This coordinated editorial effort was historically unique—at least in recent memory. It took place in a context not only of deliberate efforts by a sitting president to undermine the press’s legitimacy, but also against a backdrop of decades of economic and technological disruption in the news industry, declining public trust in the news media, and a rising sense that the country has entered a “post-truth” era. How, in this context, did the press attempt to defend their (waning) authority?

The press’s coordinated pushback offers a unique window into what Carlson (2018) calls the “information politics of journalism”: “the power struggle among competing groups seeking to define the appropriate provision and consumption of information” (p. 1880). This paper examines how newspapers tried to defend their place at “the symbolic communicative center of democratic society” (ibid, p. 1879), from two related theoretical perspectives.

From the perspective of theories of journalistic norms and roles, the editorials showcase contemporary “discursive constructions of journalism’s institutional identity” (Hanitzsch & Vos 2017, 116)—specifically, a “narrated performance” of journalism’s role in society. Carlson (2018, 1879) contends that in an era of “post-truth” discourse, “the epistemic context of contemporary journalism demands that journalists do more” to develop “extrinsic” justifications of their work, rather than falling back on standard “intrinsic” notions of objectivity and detachment. A key question is to what extent journalists seized this moment to not simply reinforce traditional arguments for journalistic legitimacy, but to redefine journalism’s practices and value to adjust to an era of profound economic, technological, political and epistemic disruption.

From the perspective of theories of press-state relations, the editorials represented a unique moment of direct combat between the White House and the press—a phenomenon not well predicted by theories of press-state relations developed in pre-hybrid media and pre-“post-truth” era. Under attack by the president of the United States—a key source of much of journalism’s institutional authority (Tuchman 1978; Cook 2005)—news outlets responded by arguing with the president about their practices (“We are not fake news!”) and about their rightful place as information- and accountability-providers. But even as many newspapers stepped out on this limb, the literature would predict that they would carefully couch their responses to reiterate their commitment to nonpartisan objectivity rather than explicitly entering the partisan fray (Bennett 1990; Schudson 2001)—for example, by not explicitly mentioning the president whose attacks evoked the coordinated editorial campaign. Did they?

Through quantitative and qualitative content analysis, this study examines the themes and arguments in the corpus of over 280 editorials published on August 15-16, 2018. Cross-tabulated with measures of the region, size, and political leanings of each newspaper, this study examines content variables including how explicitly the editorials addressed Trump’s attacks and the political context that gave rise to them; how they articulated journalism’s value in terms of institutionalized practices and roles; and whether they included a “self-critical stance” (Carlson 2018) that might open the door to serious reconsideration of reigning journalistic norms that, in a post-truth era, may not rescue journalism’s cultural authority—particularly in the face of rising populist sentiment. Indeed, the dilemma for journalism was that in responding in such a coordinated and public way, they may have simply confirmed populist arguments against an “elitist” media (deVreese 2018) while further driving publicity for Trump’s populist, anti-media attacks.

Works Cited

Bennett, W. Lance. 1990. Toward a Theory of Press-State Relations. Journal of Communication 40(2): 103-127.
Carlson, Matt. 2018. The Information Politics of Journalism in a Post-Truth Age. Journalism Studies 19 (13): 1879–1888.
Cook, Timothy E. 2005 Governing with the News, 2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
de Vreese, Claes H. 2017. Political Journalism in a Populist Age. Shorenstein Center, December 11.
Hanitzsch,Thomas & Tim P. Vos. 2017. Journalistic Roles and the Struggle Over Institutional Identity: The Discursive Constitution of Journalism. Communication Theory 27: 115–135.
Schudson, Michael. 2001. The Objectivity Norm in American Journalism. Journalism 2 (2): 149–170.
Tuchman, Gaye. 1978. Making the News: A Study in the Construction of Reality. New York: Free Press.

Author

• Regina G. Lawrence, University of Oregon