As Daily Kos has covered, Donald Trump is no stranger to pushing disinformation, bizarre claims, and remarks that divide people instead of bringing them closer together. We know that Trump absolutely loves pushing any sort of narrative that bleeds paranoia into accepting election results. Among other things, Trump has been on a mission to stew doubts about the validity of mail-in voting. While mail-in voting is, in general, a safe, legal, and totally acceptable way to vote in elections, it’s especially important given that we’re still in the midst of a literal pandemic. Voting by mail has been popular in some states for years already, and it’s no surprise that with COVID-19 ravaging in their communities, people are eager to vote from the safety and security of their homes.
Now, most readers on Daily Kos immediately recognize Trump’s voting fraud claims as ridiculous. But, sadly, as covered in-depth at Nieman Lab, his words can carry a lot of weight. According to a working paper out of Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, Trump, as well as the Republican National Committee, Trump’s campaign staff, and Fox News, are the main drivers behind the incorrect and false claims about mail-in voting fraud, as opposed to, say, social media trolls amping up the subject alone. And, unfortunately, getting mainstream media to cover the subject only lends more credence to the lies.
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The authors write that their findings suggest that “Trump has perfected the art of harnessing mass media to disseminate and at times reinforce his disinformation campaign by using three core standard practices of professional journalism.” In this case (and in journalism in general), that’s defined as elite institutional focus, headline-seeking, and balance.
Authors of the paper analyzed over 50,000 trending news stories, 75,000 Facebook posts, and 5 million tweets to gather their data. Outlets ranged from national to local papers, radio, cable TV, forums, and blogs. The paper argues that Trump’s position as president means his claims were likely to get plenty of airtime and debate, and thus, in efforts to remain neutral or in the “middle,” as is a traditional approach in journalism, outlets framed stories in a way that appeared to give more reasonable doubt to Trump’s claims than would otherwise be appropriate. Basically: If everyone is talking about it, it must be a big deal, right? In an incredibly important election cycle, too, stories and headlines that feature words like “fraud” and “voting” are certainly going to get clicks and trends online.
Fox, of course, gives a lot of credence to whatever comes out of Trump’s mouth, but because Republicans are no strangers to voter suppression in general, he isn’t speaking alone when it comes to spreading his obsessive fearmongering. When other Republicans—or experts, analysts, or so on—comment on the subject, that, too, gets coverage. It’s a circle. And while many reputable, traditional media sources do point out the statistics on how incredibly rare mail-in voting fraud actually is, the fact that the stories exist does give a semblance of validity for readers or listeners. The long-standing tradition of remaining impartial and the status of whatever the president does (or doesn’t do) being news-worthy is a recipe for disinformation campaigns getting a whole lot of brain space.
Between Trump’s attacks on the United States Postal Service and his Twitter sprees, his words—and mainstream media’s polite handling of them—matter. People from both parties should be disavowing Trump’s reckless disinformation campaign. And with less a month to the election, that actually should have happened a long time ago.
