President Trump’s recent Oval Office outburst against CNN reporter Kristen Holmes was just another in a long string of Trumpian media confrontations. The president repeatedly ordered Holmes to “be quiet” as she tried to ask him questions during a White House gaggle. Of course, Trump told Holmes that her employer represents “fake news.”
Trump followed up that clash with a social media outburst against NBC’s Kristen Welker, calling for Welker to be punished by the Federal Communications Commission. Welker claimed Trump’s record on primary endorsements “had some mixed results.” As Trump pointed out, his endorsement scorecard is actually better than “mixed,” but that is beside the point. Welker has First Amendment protection to characterize Trump’s record however she wants, and the FCC knows better than to try to punish a broadcast journalist for editorial commentary, even if it is questionable.
Deep down, Trump seems convinced the news industry is his enemy, and he has repeatedly made that sentiment known. He distrusts journalists and wants to punish them.
A case can be made that many news outlets are, indeed, biased against Trump. CNN, The New York Times, and the big three broadcast networks have well-earned the president’s ire. Studies from the Media Research Center, right-leaning as it is, confirm the establishment media’s unbalanced coverage of MAGA and Trump. But again, that is beside the point. The broad constitutional protection of a free press allows news outlets to act unprofessionally and even play fast and loose with the facts.
Trump is hardly the only president to hate the press. Even staunch First Amendment supporter Thomas Jefferson accused the news industry of “demoralizing licentiousness” and “abuses” during his second inaugural address. Jefferson even urged citizens to ignore the newspapers of that time because they engaged in “false opinions in league with false facts.”
Past presidents battled the media largely from their White House bully pulpits. But Trump has taken his running feud beyond the jawboning stage and into the courtroom; his tenure in politics has been punctuated by an unprecedented string of lawsuits against news outlets and journalists. He has targeted The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN and even the British Broadcasting Corporation, among others, seeking billions of dollars in damages.
The prospects of Trump winning these lawsuits are quite thin, mostly because of the actual malice standard. That ill-defined notion means courts have to basically psychoanalyze journalists and a newsroom culture, and then conclude that any false reporting about a public official was done with specific intent to defame. The Supreme Court established that standard in 1964’s New York Times v. Sullivan case, when it sought specifically to allow robust coverage of public figures who, presumably, have plenty of avenues available to correct any reporting errors.
Trump’s $3.8 billion defamation lawsuit against The Washington Post was dismissed earlier this summer by a federal judge precisely because Trump’s lawyers had failed to produce “convincing evidence of actual malice.”
Sure, Trump has won settlements in a couple of his legal skirmishes, collecting $15 million from ABC and another $16 million from CBS. Some observers believe ABC and CBS would have prevailed in court, but merely caved and offered relatively small settlements just to make the lawsuits go away.
Given that Trump and his lawyers surely know he can’t really win lawsuits by challenging journalistic content, such as it is, it is clear the motivation is just to make news organizations miserable. News outlets have to devote time and big money to defend themselves. Further, Trump’s lawsuits do generate a certain amount of news coverage in which Trump criticizes journalists. And the cage-rattling plays well to the Trump base.
The news industry, for its part, shows no sign of minimizing its negative coverage of all things Trump. The potential for more lawsuits has hardly caused the NYT, MS NOW or CNN to be less aggressive in criticizing the president and his administration. Thus, the ongoing litigations and threat of more lawsuits has not created a “chilling effect” on the journalism industry.
Trump would be wise to follow the second-term strategy of his White House predecessor, Thomas Jefferson. The Sage of Monticello said unfair journalists should be “left to find their punishment in the public indignation,” because “public duties more urgent press on the time of public servants.” Trump has plenty of public duties that need his attention in the last two and a half years of his presidency, without continuing to swat at the gnats of the press corps.
Jeffrey M. McCall is a media critic and professor of communication at DePauw University. He has worked as a radio news director, a newspaper reporter and as a political media consultant.
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