How the US media helped Trump
Shows such as Larry King Live which interviewed the global elite began building Trump's image decades ago.
The influence of capitalism on the mainstream news media has led to alarming outcomes in the 2016 presidential election. The term ‘mainstream news media’ refers to American news providers that are not overtly factional and occupy the centre-left to centre-right spectrum in American polity. By this definition, the list includes major news outlets, such as CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.
While these news services identify somewhat different positions on politics, economics, and social issues, they are united in their subordination to the capitalist system. This common submission to the profit paradigm, has led to some disturbing trends in news coverage, irrespective of the news provider.
News capitalism and false equivalence
The American news media has been criticized for enabling Donald Trump’s candidacy by not taking him on in the early stages of the Republican nomination process. Initially, the implied editorial line of many news presenters was that while Trump was expressing ‘politically unconventional opinions’, like banning Muslims and building walls to keep out Mexicans, his view was one among many. This tendency, known as false equivalence, lent equal authenticity to facts and to opinions and categorized bigotry as a form of free speech.
A circumstantial lens, analyzing Trump’s free run in the world of news and facts, demonstrates the entire incident as an aberration. Out of more than 50 presidential elections, only now has a particularly monstrous candidate managed to catch the media off guard. However, a structural lens reveals that the false equivalence helping Trump at present was inevitable after years of news coverage that has equated creationism with evolution, climate change with divine will, offensive rhetoric with authenticity, and sensitive public discourse with scripted political posture.
In a discussion on false equivalence, the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) has documented how the American news media give equal space to climate change deniers in the debates on climate change.
CJR notes "USA Today, for example, as a matter of policy requires that an editorial on a 'controversial' topic be paired with an editorial arguing in opposition...the paper editorialized on the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. In keeping with its policy of providing balance, it gave space to...the head of the conservative Heartland Institute, which is funded by fossil fuel companies and foundations opposed to government regulation."
Such false equivalence by USA Today is clearly an attempt to protect big capital's interests.
The American news media has adopted a similar approach to other polarized debates, like limitations of the free-market and marriage-equality for sexual minorities because those facts offend the beliefs of millions of Americans. In other words, the pursuit of neutrality has led to the abandonment of objectivity.
However, the news media’s obsession with not ‘offending’ audiences is not a manifestation of their cultural sensitivity. It is critical to understand that the apparent obsession is actually a calculated move to retain the largest audience or readers, a task increasingly harder in a highly segmented market.
Capitalism and the (missing) discourse on corruption
American news discourse has exhibited the recurrent use of terms like “conflict-of-interest”, “ethical concerns”, and “transparency issues”. However, the news media's covert refusal to identify and discuss corruption has probably led to the nomination of two very corrupt candidates - Trump and Clinton.
The media has earlier covered Hillary Clinton collecting speaking fees running into hundreds of thousands of dollars, from giant corporations. But they have naively failed to link her speaking fees to her subsequent run for the presidency. The news coverage has mostly comprised appreciation for her political star power and knowledge of global trade as Secretary of State.
However, the cascade of Wikileaks exposes have revealed Bill and Hillary Clinton as experts in legalized corruption. Their personal wealth, after leaving the White House, has increased by tens of millions of dollars. The couple also controls a billion dollar charity, the Clinton Foundation, paid for by corporate America and foreign governments.
On the other side, Donald Trump has openly bragged about buying off politicians, saying he was compelled to act within the framework of an already corrupt system. In the decades that the media made Trump famous, they failed to bring out facts that have come to light in the course of the campaign.
Before his candidacy, Trump was introduced by credible media platforms as a billionaire and embodiment of the American dream. Two separate New York Times articles in 1987 and 1997 speak of Trump as someone who “makes one believe for a moment in the American dream again” and “allowing for hyperbole ...makes things happen”.
Trump has given interviews with iconic shows like CNN’s Larry King Live which interviewed presidents, Nobel winners, and other members of the global elite. In such shows, as far back as 1987, Trump was presented as a successful businessman, with a serious political side. This image building by the American media continued many months into the Trump campaign. Only recent investigations have revealed his poor business judgment, flouting of the law, bribing elected officials, gaming the American taxation system, and his sham charities.
The news media’s refusal to discuss the cronyism and corruption of the individuals they promote is significantly influenced by its own embedded status in the capitalist system. Leading news providers in America are owned by entities partially or wholly owned by big banks and trans-national corporations. Most of these entities support Clinton. In their estimation, she is an easily corruptible personality as well as an efficient inside player in Washington. Trump has fewer big backers, not because of his integrity, but because of his unreliability and general lack of competence.
In fact, big capital’s disproportionate power in the current election is a feature in every political contest in America. The presidential race is the quadrennial culmination of capital's routine influence on by-elections, federal judiciary appointments, and state legislative laws.
One of the most prominent American journalists on social media and long-term anti-corruption activist, Cenk Ugyur, has described the pressures of power when he was a corporate media journalist. A feisty news anchor at the time, Cenk had attempted to expose this grand bargain of politics and business - otherwise known as systemic corruption. This is a significant reason why mainstream American news is inclined to present corruption as the transgressions of individuals and as the slippages of petty functionaries in business and government.
Capitalism and celebrity culture
The pursuit of profit by the American news media has also blurred the lines between news and entertainment. This blurring helps to maximize the consumer pool by coupling the separate consumption of news and entertainment.
Serious politicians appear on talk shows in faux intimacy constructs, revealing their personal lives and fashion choices. The sitting president of the United States, Barack Obama, participates in a musical performance on Jimmy Fallon's show. Hillary Clinton has danced, more than once, on the Ellen Show. These are not exceptional circumstances but important examples underlining the growing trend of celebrity culture among American politicians.
The consequence has been devastating: if politicians can be celebrities, then it follows that celebrities can be politicians. So in comes Donald Trump, one of America’s most well-known celebrity businessmen.
The second factor contributing to the celebrity-politician conflux is the now established role of talk show hosts and comedians in presenting news. Shows such as Bill Maher’s “Real Time” and Trevor Noah’s “The Daily Show” offer the news to Americans who do not watch the ‘standard fare’ on MSNBC and CNN.
Because of their loyal audiences and star power, these shows enjoy a greater degree of freedom from corporate supervision, enabling them to speak truth to power. However, the gravity which accompanies news has been replaced with the impertinence of street humour.
This substitution has eroded the solemnity with which many Americans used to assess their politicians. Americans no longer insist on gravitas as a preferable trait among politicians. They prefer politicians who are ‘relatable’.
Last but not least, the news media, which is hesitant to discuss corruption, has almost no qualms discussing the sex lives of politicians. Media outrage on Trump’s private, lewd conversations have been far greater than his public policy announcements to set back the progress in American healthcare, his questionable tax plans, and his advocacy to discriminate against Muslims and Mexicans through U.S. government policy. Trump’s misogynistic and racist language deserves coverage, but the reports on his disastrous policy prescriptions have been muted in comparison.
Trump’s coverage in the news media is not an aberration. Even in the nineties, American news was more interested in Bill Clinton’s sexual activities than in questioning him on poor trade deals, such as NAFTA, deregulation of financial institutions, and questionable intervention in Bosnia.
The media has not consistently tackled systemic, national problems because the distracting discourse, on individual flaws, is a low-risk strategy that is profitable while protecting societal stability - the necessary condition for capitalism.
Failing to fulfil their journalistic functions
These three trends reveal that the American news media are prevented from fulfilling their journalistic functions largely due to the burden of their capitalist nature and capitalist functions. The decline of journalism and the rise of entertainment in American news, especially led by television, is now also a problem in other countries that have a 'free' press. It is time for deeper debates, such as the incongruity between journalism and capitalism.
Sampad Patnaik is a MPhil candidate, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge.