Donald Trump be missed by the media?
Donald Trump left Washington on Wednesday, January 20, a few hours before Joe Biden's swearing-in. He praised four "extraordinary" years in the White House, marked, in particular, by his tumultuous relations with the media, regularly vilified but which sometimes saw their audience soar to the rhythm of the tweets of the now ex-president.
The relationship the media and Donald Trump have enjoyed for over four years has been "I love you, neither do I." Some needed the other and vice versa, but they didn't get along well. This relationship of interdependence appeared as soon as the future president's candidacy for the Republican Party primaries was declared on June 16, 2015: Donald Trump notably addressed the construction of his wall on the Mexican border. The next day, it found itself on the front pages of many newspapers, in the United States and around the world. We could already see that the media would have an impact on the campaign.
Two months later, Donald Trump was leading the polls after he had never been in politics and half the world did not take him seriously. This over-representation continued throughout the campaign that followed. Outraged, Donald Trump has been in the news almost every day, becoming indispensable edition after edition. His campaign did not cost him dearly, as he had received free publicity through the intermediary media. The latter were accused of building the character, an embarrassing reproach which they were quick to put under the doormat.
During the Trump presidency, newspapers opposing the businessman, such as the Washington Post and the New York Times, took advantage of this, each opening offices in the other's city to be as close as possible to Trumpist news. I often hear, "You're going to be bored with Joe Biden. At least with Donald Trump there was some news. And that’s not wrong. Donald Trump was a really good client of the American media.
But for five years, Donald Trump also used the media. By rejecting them, beating them down or insulting them, he created reactions. At first, he threatened to shut down the White House press room, to stop speaking to what they called "fake news media," something he never did.
But he has also gone over these traditional news channels, to engage directly with his supporters, even widening his base, via Twitter. By the time his account was suspended, he was approaching 90 million followers, mostly supporters and curious. It had itself become a full-fledged and deafening medium.
With Joe Biden coming to power, newspaper bosses may fear that American politics will be less interesting and sales will decline. But journalists will always have subjects to cover. What will change is that there will no longer be those tweets that pop up all the time and to react to. The treatment will come back more to the substance than to the form.
Sébastien Mort, lecturer in cultures and societies of the United States at the University of Lorraine (Metz)
America's mainstream news media must detoxify Donald Trump. The press in large cities, terrestrial and cable channels played a crucial role in the candidate's legitimization from 2015.
The Trump phenomenon has shot up their audiences, but the resulting rise in revenue is double-edged. This rebound is a decoy because it gives the impression that the news media have succeeded in being economically viable, while it in no way solves their structural problem, namely the dependence on advertising revenues which makes them vulnerable to economic fluctuations. . This dependence leads them to give in to spectacular logic and in a way to abdicate their civic and audience-edifying role. The financial crisis of 2007 was disastrous, leading to a reduction, for example, in the number of "homemade" reports in favor of less interesting on-set or remote interviews. This decline in the quality of information predates Donald Trump's arrival, but he has taken advantage of it.
The departure of the outgoing president can only prompt the American media to rethink their economic model and imagine a way to serve the general interest without needing a Jeff Bezos to save the Washington Post.
The problem is that the almost unlimited and abundant supply of news sources allows activists to consume only the media with which they agree. Two media universes coexist without ever changing their minds. These media function as echo chambers which preach only to the convinced, especially among the Trumpists whose support for the former president is visceral. The continued growth of audiences for channels like One America Network (OAN), a sort of "poor man's Fox News," attests to this.
The space occupied by Donald Trump is expected to shrink due to the attention given to Joe Biden and his majority in Congress by the media, traditionally deferential to elected officials. Even if in a very exceptional way, they broke with this habit by cutting the diffusion of the interventions of spokespersons contesting the regularity of the vote in defiance of the facts. In addition, the former president is deprived of Twitter, an instrument which allowed him to influence the media agenda, his tweets being systematically relayed.
The fact remains that Trumpism will not disappear.
It is therefore likely that the media will continue to focus on Donald Trump to find out what he wants to do after leaving the White House. Given the court cases that lie in wait for him, it is also possible that the press, after becoming passionate about Donald Trump during his rise, is covering his fall with the same fascination.
