Those examples have only piled up since 2018, as Trump’s behavior has become even more racist. The AP is careful to suggest that journalists should still avoid calling out individuals as racists, noting, "It’s far harder to match the complexity of a person to a definition or label than it is a statement or action.” But when it comes to actions and comments, journalists should not shy away from the truth.
Additionally, the AP assures journalists that they don't have to be in the mind-reading business. In other words, when using "racist" as an adjective to describe comments or events, reporters and editors “need not involve examining the motivation of the person who spoke or acted, which is a separate issue that may not be related to how the statement or action itself can be characterized.”
The AP's style update, urging journalists to be more forthright, comes just weeks after Trump's longtime fixer Michael Cohen testified before Congress about his boss’s often racist behavior. “While we were once driving through a struggling neighborhood in Chicago, he commented that only black people could live that way,” Cohen told members of Congress. “And, he told me that black people would never vote for him because they were too stupid.”
Cohen's examples join a long and ugly list of Trump racist commentary. "Laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that," Trump once told the head of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino. Meeting with lawmakers last year, Trump demanded to know, "Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?" referring to African nations, as well as Haiti and El Salvador. Lashing out at one of his few black aides, Trump insulted Omarosa Manigault-Newman by calling her a "dog" and a "crazed, crying lowlife." And he famously suggested there were "fine people on both sides" after white nationalist Nazi sympathizers faced off with counter-protesters in the deadly 2017 events in Charlottesville, Virginia.
During the 2016 campaign, when Trump smeared a U.S.-born judge overseeing a Trump University lawsuit, claiming he couldn’t be impartial because he had Mexican heritage, even then-Speaker of the House, Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan, denounced the comments as “the textbook definition” of racism.
I realize that a Beltway press corps—which often won't even label Trump a "liar" today, even though he's already lied more than 9,000 times since being sworn into the Oval Office—probably won't rush to embrace the AP's guidance when it comes to Trump. That's because simple truth telling remains one of the biggest self-imposed obstacles for the press in this age of Trump. He doesn't act like any previous president, and Trump remains a deeply hateful man who lies constantly and spews racist rhetoric. The fundamentals of journalism demand that the press report all of that, without fear or favor. But the truth is, lots of journalists are afraid to. So too often, they dance around the ugliness on display and pretend that Trump's behavior and comments aren't racist.
Yet they are. And the new AP Stylebook changes, by urging newsrooms to be more forthright about labeling racists comments in the news, mean that journalists have one less excuse for not calling Trump out.
Eric Boehlert is a veteran progressive writer and media analyst, formerly with Media Matters and Salon. He is the author of Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush and Bloggers on the Bus. You can follow him on Twitter @EricBoehlert.
This post was written and reported through our Daily Kos freelance program.
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