Did the networks get played by Trump’s address? Either way, they failed. - Columbia Journalism Review

By Jon Allsop, CJR

January 9, 2019 Photographer: Carlos Barria/Pool via Bloomberg

Donald Trump’s first Oval Office address to the nation last night was, as many predicted in advance, driven by false and misleading claims. It was also, as many predicted in advance, dull and repetitious. The president did not declare a national emergency; rather, he cycled through his deck of familiar anti-immigration talking points, doubled down on his border-wall plans, and moved the needle not a jot on his deadlocked negotiations with congressional Democrats. As Adam Sneed, an editor at CityLab, tweeted, the address was “The national political equivalent of a meeting that could’ve been an email.”

Commentators who argued that the networks shouldn’t carry the address in the first place claimed its anticlimactic nature vindicated them. “The networks interrupted their entertainment fare for the lamest rerun on national television: Trump’s immigration talking points,” The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple tweeted. “Shame on you, networks,” CUNY’s Jeff Jarvis added, “Shame on you.” And Pod Save America’s Dan Pfeiffer channeled many on the left when he said, “The networks got played.” Proponents of airing, including network bosses, don’t agree—the decision to go live, as the Post’s Sarah Ellison and Paul Farhi report, was less a bet on the likely content of the speech than a reflection of its newsworthy timing on the 18th day of a partial government shutdown. As with its message on immigration, when it comes to the debate over airing Trump’s lies, it’s unlikely the address changed too many minds last night.

ICYMI: Trump’s lies will be televised. Networks should fact-check them.

I wrote yesterday that, with that debate ongoing, the focus should turn to networks’ plans to handle Trump’s words. Not a single one CJR’s staff saw offered an on-screen fact check in real time last night. Anchors and pundits did wrap reality around the address. Beforehand, for example, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow fact-checked—and logic-checked—the president’s typical immigration rhetoric, separating it into falsehoods that would make sense if they were true and falsehoods that would not. After the address, CNN, whose panel included Toronto Star fact-checking maven Daniel Dale, ran chyrons contrasting Trump’s statements and the facts under the typical punditry. And CNN, CBS, and others ran live analysis on their websites. That’s all better than nothing. But more of an effort could have been made to put the truth right up on screen as Trump defied it. Doing so would have caught floating viewers who hopped over for the address, and disrupted the flow of the narrative Trump built from false premises. And it would have been perfectly doable given how predictable and pat Trump’s lines were.

Nor was the fact-checking that did happen universally successful. The best way to rebut a lie remains open to debate. But the “Trump:… Fact:…” formula used by CNN, for example, is unduly balanced; it would be better to start the sentence “Trump misstated that…” or simply to state the truth without repeating the lie at all. In its real-time online fact-check last night, the Post’s team tried both those formulations in prominent subheadings such as “The trade deal does not pay for the wall” and “Most imported heroin comes through legal points of entry.” BuzzFeed went further still: rather than react to Trump’s claims, it selected and posted its own stream of facts about the border. Much of what we saw from the networks was less compelling: ABC’s on-air walking tour of its fact-checking department was, my colleague commented, “bad television.”

After Trump delivered his dud, Bill Carter, an analyst for CNN and former Times reporter, tweeted that networks would be wise to learn a lesson from last night; Carter suggests they should tell the White House, “That was a fraudulent request; forget asking for platform for your political posturing ever again.” Networks obviously aren’t going to take that advice. If that means they’ll have plenty more opportunities to try something different going forward, last night was not an encouraging sign of change.

Below, more on Trump’s address:


Other notable stories:

ICYMI: How Der Spiegel was deceived by a fabulist

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today. Jon Allsop is a freelance journalist. He writes CJR's newsletter The Media Today. Find him on Twitter @Jon_Allsop.

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