Presidential Authority and the Legitimation of Far-Right News

• In Event: Bias, Media Bias, and Nothing but Bias

Abstract

As president, Donald Trump yielded immense political power. In this study, we examine how Trump used that authority to create favorable media conditions by legitimizing far-right outlets. Trump frequently railed against mainstream news, and though he prioritized conservative media (Meeks, 2020), he increasingly attacked Fox News during his presidency while elevating less critical outlets like OANN (Archer, 2021). Through his efforts to undermine those perceived as disloyal–including Fox–and reward the loyalty of outlets like OANN, we posit Trump legitimized far-right outlets in mainstream politics.

To understand this power, we draw from literature on forms of authority fomented through communication and media. Herbst’s theory of media-derived authority emphasizes that communication is both integral to various forms of authority and that media themselves lend authority to people and topics (2003). Trump’s status as a candidate and president allowed him to successfully use communication platforms (e.g., Twitter) to elevate loyal supporters and influence news media (e.g., Wells et al., 2020; McGregor & Lawrence, 2020). We argue that his prioritization and mentions of far-right outlets legitimated them among GOP elites and led to their increased coverage in legacy media. Given the power of media-derived authority (Herbst, 2003), once fringe outlets were conferred with newfound authority and legitimacy.

Our overarching research question asks: To what extent did Trump use the power of the presidency to legitimate far-right news outlets within the Republican party and in the broader media ecosystem?

In our study of far-right outlets, we focus on Newsmax, OANN and Breitbart. Newsmax and OANN have experienced surges in attention such that 21% and 14% of Republicans, respectively, now regularly turn to them (Mitchell, 2021); Breitbart was the most popular right-wing media site during the 2016 election (Benkler et al., 2018). We examine two types of legitimation tactics: (1) Trump’s Twitter mentions of these outlets while president, and (2) the frequency with which these outlets’ reporters appeared in and were called on at White House press briefings. We correlate these tactics with two key outcomes: (1) GOP members of Congress’ appearances in and on these far-right outlets, and (2) mentions of these fringe outlets in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post, legacy newspapers with the largest US circulations (Turvill, 2021, 2022). To do so, we scrape OANN and Newsmax’s YouTube channels for video information and use Media Cloud to collect all other sources’ online articles.

Trump’s blatant lies about the 2020 election culminated with the violent attempted coup at the US Capitol. As both mainstream and conservative media shifted their tone toward fact-checking and cut away from Trump’s lies (Grynbaum & Hsu, 2020), far-right outlets like those we study here continued to propagate them. That Trump used his presidential power to legitimize fringe outlets sets a dangerous precedent for the 2022 midterms and beyond.

WORKS CITED
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Authors

• Allison M.N. Archer, University of Houston

• Carolyn Schmitt, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Shannon C McGregor, University of North Carolina