It’s an issue that just came up in Trump’s meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un: How do you talk with, or even about, a violent, egotistical dictator without elevating his status? That’s a problem for both sides of the table in Singapore, and it’s very similar to the problem that the American media faces every day: How to talk about Donald Trump, without boosting Donald Trump.
It’s clearly not possible to ignore Trump. But too often articles start off by repeating Trump’s lies, normalizing the abnormal, or even attempting to play off Trump’s faults as strengths. It doesn’t take a never-leaves-Fox mushroom viewer to be convinced that Trump left his meeting with Kim a winner, or that the FBI Inspector General report provided a “horror show” that “totally exonerated” Trump. All it takes is skimming the headlines at America’s major media.
The media could do better. It should do better. And here are a trio of takes on ways that anyone reporting on, talking about, or arguing about Trump can talk about his lies … without handing Trump a victory.
Report the story, not the narrative. In the Washington Post, Greg Sargent notes that while the actual finding of the FBI Inspector General’s report is that the decision not to prosecute Clinton was made without political bias, reporting on the story has tended to focus not on this core conclusion. Instead, more attention is given to selected quotes that play to the narrative of a fight between Trump and the FBI and on the idea that—even though the report gives Trump nothing to celebrate, “The IG report nonetheless provides fodder and ammunition to Trump and his allies to discredit Mueller’s probe.” Except that it doesn’t. It does exactly the opposite, no matter what Trump and supporters claim. But Sargent points out that news reports “inadvertently grant these arguments.” It happens both by repeating claims made by Trump and his supporters, and by by either failing to refute those claims, or treating the truth as if it’s a “side” in the argument.
Don’t work within Trump’s frame. At the Guardian, wordsmiths George Lakoff and Gil Duran bemoan the ease with which Trump inserts new phrases and concepts into the language and gets the media to use them. One day it’s Trump saying “You call it spygate” and the next day major media outlets really are calling it “spygate” even though there were no spies and no “gate.” Donald Trump’s phrasing often seems so clumsy and amateurish, that it’s easy to overlook that Trump has been making his living as a conman for decades. He knows how to “weaponize words” in ways that both diminish his opponents and enhance his own position. The idea that the there is a “deep state conspiracy” after Trump, or that Trump’s visit to Singapore “solved the problem of nuclear war” may both seem worthy of chuckles to someone who understands the issues. Most people don’t understand the issue. If they’re seeing “deep state” and “sleep well” both from Trump and the media, those are the phrases they take to heart.
And if Trump’s more Twitter rampages, or his grass-chewing meander around the White House lawn, seem both purposeless and crazy, think again.
Lakoff and Duran break Trump’s tweets into four categories: Pre-emptive framing, diversion, deflection, and trial balloon. The tweets are strategic. And they’re experiments. They let Trump not just plant ideas, but test the boundaries. And the media’s willingness to report on the tweets as if they’re thoughtless and inconsequential, gives Trump the room he needs to refine, repeat, and drive home his message. Instead of directly covering these tweets, the media need to do what Sargent was indicating in his article—bypass them for the real story. Rather than repeating Trump’s latest “spygate” tweet, media should ignore Trump’s frame, and report the truth of the story. Even if that means hitting the truth of the story for the tenth or a hundred time.
Report the true frames that he is trying to pre-empt. Report the truth that he is trying to divert attention from. Put the blame where it belongs. Bust the trial balloon. Report what the strategies are trying to hide.
They sum up their advice to journalists with four quick rules:
- Understand how propaganda works and how to recognize framing when you see it.
- Don’t lose focus—America is under attack by a foreign government.
- Start every story with the core truth and important elements (“More BBC, less TMZ.”)
- Don’t spread lies by putting them in headlines or tweets where they’re easily repeated.
Finally, over at the New York Times, David Leonhardt provides an example with his latest column. While too many supposed “straight news” reports from the Times have violated every one of the rules above, Leonhardt’s opinion piece does much better in it’s headline: “The Report’s Real Message: Trump Is Lying” and in it’s content. It reminds readers that the IG report is lengthy, but that the central result of that report is
The report addresses one question that’s more important than any other: Did the Justice Department and F.B.I. use their power, as Trump has repeatedly claimed, to help Clinton’s campaign and hurt his? …
And the report’s answer is clear: No.
Leonhardt goes on to mention some of the claims made by Trump, along with some of the headlines being run by right-wing media, but he does so in context of showing how they are wrong, and he doesn’t make these Trump-friendly frames either the headline or the focus of his piece.
Author’s note—I’ve often failed to follow these guidelines myself. It’s extremely easy to react to one of Trump’s outrageous trial balloons, or to settle into the frames he’s built. It’s very, very tempting to headline a piece with some tweet or statement from Trump’s exactly because it seems so over-the-top, so unbelievable. But it’s vital to remember that doing so helps Trump, and I don’t want to be in that business.