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The news media have set a new standard for negative coverage
The president’s complaints about negative media coverage are not just self-aggrieved rantings. Studies by the Pew Research Center, Harvard’s Shorenstein Center and the conservative Media Research Center have all found that news coverage of Trump “set a new standard for negativity,” as the Harvard report put it. Pew researchers calculated that media coverage of Trump’s first two months in office was 62 percent negative and just 5 percent positive. By comparison, Barack Obama’s coverage in the first months of his presidency was 20 percent negative and 42 percent positive.
Many defenders of the media (and opponents of the president) are unruffled by the unprecedented negativity of Trump’s coverage. As Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan argued, “If a president is doing a rotten job, it’s the duty of the press to report how and why he’s doing a rotten job.”
But as any parent knows, a steady diet of criticism — however well-deserved — risks being tuned out, especially if it is delivered in a hectoring, combative or dismissive key. Legendary journalist Bob Woodward has criticized “a kind of self-righteousness and smugness” in news coverage of Trump. “When we reported on Nixon, it was obviously a very different era but we did not adopt a tone of ridicule.”
Media critic Howard Kurtz blames both the messengers and the reality they have to report: “Some stories are legitimate, some are not, and others are generated by the president’s own falsehoods and exaggerations. But the mainstream media, subconsciously at first, has lurched into the opposition camp.” Kurtz adds, “Donald Trump is staking his presidency … on nothing less than destroying the credibility of the news media; and the media are determined to do the same to him.”
In light of these developments, it should not be surprising that journalists themselves have become prominent protagonists in the partisan battle, continuing a long trend of declining confidence in the press, especially among Republicans. In the November 2017 YouGov survey, Democrats and Democratic “leaners” (as measured in 2015) gave journalists an average rating of 6.3 on a zero-to-10 scale; the corresponding average rating among Republicans and Republican “leaners” was 3.6. That 2.7-point gap exceeded the partisan difference in ratings of such familiar right-wing bugbears as immigrants (1.3 points), Muslims (1.8 points), gays and lesbians (1.9 points), and college professors (2.5 points).
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Even more worryingly, the negativity of news coverage of Trump seems to be producing “outrage fatigue” not only among the president’s supporters but also among the shrinking sliver of the public that has so far resisted partisan polarization. The 14 percent of YouGov survey respondents who were “pure” independents in 2015 gave journalists a tepid average rating of 4.2 in November 2017 — a good deal closer to the Republicans’ 3.6 than to the Democrats’ 6.3.
SOURCE : Larry M. Bartels holds the May Werthan Shayne Chair of Public Policy and Social Science at Vanderbilt University. His books include “Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government” with Christopher H. Achen, (Princeton University Press, 2016) and “Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age,” 2nd edition (Princeton University Press, 2016).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...?utm_term=.cf2461baf1c3&wpisrc=nl_cage&wpmm=1
The president’s complaints about negative media coverage are not just self-aggrieved rantings. Studies by the Pew Research Center, Harvard’s Shorenstein Center and the conservative Media Research Center have all found that news coverage of Trump “set a new standard for negativity,” as the Harvard report put it. Pew researchers calculated that media coverage of Trump’s first two months in office was 62 percent negative and just 5 percent positive. By comparison, Barack Obama’s coverage in the first months of his presidency was 20 percent negative and 42 percent positive.
Many defenders of the media (and opponents of the president) are unruffled by the unprecedented negativity of Trump’s coverage. As Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan argued, “If a president is doing a rotten job, it’s the duty of the press to report how and why he’s doing a rotten job.”
But as any parent knows, a steady diet of criticism — however well-deserved — risks being tuned out, especially if it is delivered in a hectoring, combative or dismissive key. Legendary journalist Bob Woodward has criticized “a kind of self-righteousness and smugness” in news coverage of Trump. “When we reported on Nixon, it was obviously a very different era but we did not adopt a tone of ridicule.”
Media critic Howard Kurtz blames both the messengers and the reality they have to report: “Some stories are legitimate, some are not, and others are generated by the president’s own falsehoods and exaggerations. But the mainstream media, subconsciously at first, has lurched into the opposition camp.” Kurtz adds, “Donald Trump is staking his presidency … on nothing less than destroying the credibility of the news media; and the media are determined to do the same to him.”
In light of these developments, it should not be surprising that journalists themselves have become prominent protagonists in the partisan battle, continuing a long trend of declining confidence in the press, especially among Republicans. In the November 2017 YouGov survey, Democrats and Democratic “leaners” (as measured in 2015) gave journalists an average rating of 6.3 on a zero-to-10 scale; the corresponding average rating among Republicans and Republican “leaners” was 3.6. That 2.7-point gap exceeded the partisan difference in ratings of such familiar right-wing bugbears as immigrants (1.3 points), Muslims (1.8 points), gays and lesbians (1.9 points), and college professors (2.5 points).
The story must be told.
Your subscription supports journalism that matters.
Try 1 month for $1
Even more worryingly, the negativity of news coverage of Trump seems to be producing “outrage fatigue” not only among the president’s supporters but also among the shrinking sliver of the public that has so far resisted partisan polarization. The 14 percent of YouGov survey respondents who were “pure” independents in 2015 gave journalists a tepid average rating of 4.2 in November 2017 — a good deal closer to the Republicans’ 3.6 than to the Democrats’ 6.3.
SOURCE : Larry M. Bartels holds the May Werthan Shayne Chair of Public Policy and Social Science at Vanderbilt University. His books include “Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government” with Christopher H. Achen, (Princeton University Press, 2016) and “Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age,” 2nd edition (Princeton University Press, 2016).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...?utm_term=.cf2461baf1c3&wpisrc=nl_cage&wpmm=1
