Here we are. A politician, branded a fascist by four-star generals, who declared journalists an “enemy within,” threatened to pull the broadcast licenses of critical outlets, promised to imprison us and giddily imagined some of our rapes, has once again been elected president of the United States.
At the same time, Gallup reports public trust in the media remains at an all-time low. A plurality of all respondents say they have no trust in the media “at all” and more than 60% percent of every demographic — regardless of race, age, and income, or educational attainment — rate their trust in our reporting as either “not very much” or not “at all.” We are communicating with an ever-smaller slice of the American public and our ranks continue to shrink. The latest Medill survey shows newspaper jobs are disappearing at a rate similar to cassette tape and DVD manufacturing.
It’s easy to think, nine years after Donald Trump came down the escalator, that nothing we do matters.
But this is not true. Trump is a destabilizing force, but he is not the only player. For far too long, we have piled excessive attention on him. For journalists to succeed over the next four years, we need to reevaluate our posture and look beyond the maelstrom. If we don’t take the bait, if we focus on issues that matter and use the tools that journalism provides to surface information in the public interest, we can still hold powerful actors accountable and generate change.
The first Trump term was hardly a disaster for journalism. Beyond circulation spikes that provided a temporary boost was a significant body of impactful work.
The #MeToo movement surged after Jodi Kantor, Meghan Twohey and Ronan Farrow exposed Harvey Weinstein in The New York Times and The New Yorker. In the wake of that coverage, hundreds of powerful men lost their jobs. Predatory men were often replaced by women. Trump himself was ordered to pay $83 million for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carrol, a judgment that was made possible by a New York law that extended the statute of limitations for sexual assault.
“The 1619 Project,” led by Nikole Hannah Jones, provided an intellectual framework for the “racial reckoning” that followed the murder of George Floyd a year later. As the Black Lives Matter movement propelled discussions about systemic racism and police reform, progressive prosecutors won elections, even as media outlets, including The Washington Post and The Guardian, substantiated the scale of police violence, which the government itself had failed to track.
Trump was hardly friendly to this work. He employed virulently racist rhetoric and specifically targeted “The 1619 Project.” But our journalism resonated nonetheless. It may seem counter-intuitive, but it’s true. Progressive criminal justice policies blossomed under Trump. Diversity, equity and inclusion programs proliferated. It was only after Joe Biden took the oath that a backlash took hold.
My own work during Trump’s first term centered largely on racism and economic equity. In 2018, my colleague Emmanuel Martinez and I published an investigation, “Kept Out,” which exposed modern-day redlining in 61 U.S. cities. In Atlanta, Detroit, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Washington, D.C., and dozens of other cities across America, we found people of color were far more likely to be denied a mortgage loan even when they made the same amount of money, sought the same size loan and wanted to buy in the same neighborhood.
Our work had an immediate and resonating impact. In Washington, senators spoke out. Congressional hearings were held. Major national banks opened branches in communities of color. Six state attorneys general launched investigations. In Philadelphia, where we conducted our field reporting, the city created a $100 million revolving loan fund to help first-time homebuyers. After Trump left office, three states and the Justice Department reached a $20 million settlement with one of Warren Buffett’s mortgage companies, which had been the largest lending in Philadelphia. It also shut down.
As president, Trump was part of our stories. For example, we documented his administration’s efforts to weaken the Community Reinvestment Act, a 1977 law designed to stop discrimination in lending. But a long list of state, local and corporate actors were also responsible — and our investigation found the failure to enforce civil rights laws was bipartisan. During Barack Obama’s two terms, the Black and Latino homeownership rates fell markedly. At every stage, we put the American dream, not only a single politician, was at the center.
Sadly, the examples above are the exception rather than the norm. Throughout his first term in office, the media breathlessly covered Trump’s palace intrigue without regard to its impact on people. CJR has reported how the media’s myopic focus on Trump “was without historic precedent” with viewers “the only victims.” We have focused largely on the circus rather than the issues — to our own detriment.
Trump tells his supporters that we are out to get him and he is largely correct. We compete for scoops, highlight his failures, and ignore his successes. It’s no wonder readers tune us out. Large numbers of Black and Latino voters defected from the Democrats in part because economic conditions improved during Trump’s tenure — including for people of color. Black and Latino homeownership rates increased throughout Trump’s first term after declining throughout Obama’s presidency. The unemployment rate for Black and Latino Americans hit historic lows before the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down.
Here the story usually goes to the Trump administration’s bungled response to COVID-19, with about 400,000 Americans dying on his watch. But the economic side of the pandemic was less of a failure than bipartisan success.
A mountain of investigative reporting on the government’s failure following the 2008 crash prompted a more effective response to housing policy during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Trump administration brushed aside the “moral hazard” argument favored by George W. Bush and Obama, declared foreclosure and eviction moratoria and allowed millions of newly unemployed Americans to rework their mortgages. The $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, which passed with broad bipartisan support, included economic equity provisions drafted by frequent Trump antagonist Maxine Waters, a Democrat from Los Angeles. Follow-on legislation, also signed by Trump, funneled $25 billion to struggling renters.
This is a story largely buried by the media, which — true to our bad news bias — tended to focus on cases of fraud and families facing eviction or foreclosure despite the policies rather than their overall success. .
In the next four years, we must hold President Trump accountable, but we must also focus on issues that matter to our audiences. If we lean in and focus on them — instead of breathlessly reporting on the circus around him — we can’t go wrong. And if the truth shows the news is good for Trump, so be it.
We need to tell the whole truth in a way that matters to our audience. Otherwise, why would they trust us?
