Donald Trump, the media and public opinion
Since his election in 2016, President Trump has been extremely aggressive towards the media and journalists. This strained relationship is part of an older movement in the United States of media polarization and the rise of fake news (infox).
How does President Trump view the media?
Populist and extraordinary president Donald Trump regularly attacks certain media, an attitude that completely breaks with American traditions. Indeed, freedom of expression and freedom of the press are guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Constitution and as such enjoy an almost sacred status in the country.
But the President hates what he calls the "mainstream liberal media". He accuses them of imposing a "politically correct" vision on American society for the benefit of the educated and well-meaning elites of the big cities. Its hostility thus participates in its anti-elite posture.
“American public opinion is educating itself more and more through online sites and social networks. However, it has little confidence in the media in general, especially on the Republican side.”
Taking up another characteristic of populist leaders, Donald Trump also seeks to bypass the media to establish a direct relationship with the people. Its twitter thread is the privileged instrument. However, beyond this loathing, D. Trump also succeeds admirably in manipulating media of all stripes by dominating the news cycle. The mainstream media have so far seemed helpless both in the face of attacks by the President and the spread of fake news.
American public opinion is increasingly informed through online sites and social networks. However, she has little confidence in the media in general, especially on the Republican side.
American society as a whole is beginning to realize the democratic risks engendered by the massive use of social networks in the information cycle. The unprecedented political sequence in America today therefore sees a very complex triangle operating between the President, the various media and public opinion.
Why is Donald Trump attacking the "mainstream progressive media"?
President Trump's track record in dealing with CNN, the Washington Post, or the New York Times speaks volumes. As early as 2015-2016, during his campaign meetings, he pointed to the journalists present in the room, pointing them out to the audience with the cry of "fake news!" (false information or "infox").
His attacks have not stopped since. In the aftermath of the November 2018 midterm elections, he had CNN journalist Jim Acosta withdraw his accreditation from the White House press room, on the spurious pretext that the latter had physically repelled the trainee who was attempting to take back his microphone (this accreditation has since been returned to the journalist).
In February 2019, following the publication of a New York Times report on the President's attempts to influence those responsible for various inquiries concerning him, Donald Trump called the newspaper, on twitter, "a real enemy of the people ”. While he had used the term often in connection with the press in general, he had not yet directly used it to refer to the New York Times, considered, along with the Washington Post, to be one of the main opposition newspapers. .
The media are debating how to deal with the President’s attacks, such as the November 2018 incident with Jim Acosta. Should they react by boycotting the White House press room? On the contrary, did they have to look down on things, not dwell on the incident in order to continue dealing with America's fundamental problems? In the first case, D. Trump could have demonstrated once again to his electoral base that the press is united against him. In the second, the journalists would have led to believe that they were bowing their heads at the President's methods ... No solution was therefore satisfactory.
In his battle against the media, what are Donald Trump's motivations?
President Trump intends to bypass the media to communicate directly with the people. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first to speak directly to the people, through radio. During 30 conversations by the fireside (Fireside Chats), conducted from 1933 to 1944, he had sought to reassure Americans by explaining the major measures of the New Deal and then the major stages of World War II.
With social media, the current President is taking a new step. Donald Trump has been on twitter since September 2009. As of spring 2020, his profile shows more than 70 million subscribers and more than 49,200 tweets issued. His posts are often written at dawn, between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m., in reaction to morning political broadcasts on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, which he watches diligently.
Of course, the purpose and tone of President Trump's tweets are radically different from Roosevelt's Fireside Chats. These were long monologues (13 to 44 minutes) in which the President tried to put things in a simple but detailed manner.
D. Trump's tweets, limited to 140 and then 280 characters, contain virulent criticism from American politicians - including John McCain, who died in August 2018 - or other heads of state - including Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron; advertisements that contradict those of its own services; and, most often, boasting. These tweets only reinforce the credibility of its transgressive and anti-system positioning with its electoral base.
What is the current American media landscape?
D. Trump’s electoral victory took place in a very specific media context, conducive to political polarization. Certainly, it has always been difficult to find unifying media in a country as large as the United States. There is no single newscast in a country with multiple time zones. Only USA Today has full and popular coverage in all 50 states.
"To find an audience - and advertising revenue - in this immense media landscape, many media have radicalized their political roots."
The emergence of cable channels in the 1980s and then of the online press and social networks from 2000 onwards also generated unprecedented competition with traditional radio stations and newspapers. To find an audience - and advertising revenue - in this immense media landscape, many media have radicalized their political roots.
On the conservative side, there is a wide range of media, ranging from the pro-business and center-right daily The Wall Street Journal to the radical Fox News television channel. According to many observers, the latter has become a real pro-Trump propaganda machine. There are also many, many extreme right-wing websites with heavy-handed methods of communication.
Given the importance of the principle of freedom of expression, there is no equivalent in the United States to French laws condemning incitement to racial hatred. There are therefore few limits to the content that can be found on these sites.
On the other side of the political spectrum, the mainstream media known for their serious journalistic qualities have also adopted a partisan stance. The New York Times, The Washington Post, MSNBC and CNN are shooting the President. The New York Times has also announced traffic figures that have risen sharply since the election of D. Trump - it would have gone from one million digital subscribers in 2015 to 3.5 million in mid 2019. It is therefore up to misinterpretation of this economic success that the President dubbed the newspaper the “New York Times“ which fails ”” (“failing” New York Times).
The Washington Post, for its part, justifies its even more aggressive line towards the President by its tradition of democratic demands on power, inherited from its journalistic exploits during the Watergate scandal. Satirical evening shows, such as the "Late Show With Steven Colbert" broadcast in the third part of the evening on CBS, also play in the progressive camp, responding to presidential excesses with derision.
In fact, one of the few places for bipartisan media debate today is "The View", which brings together a panel of women editorialists with differing opinions every night on ABC. For the current season, "The View" brings together such politically diverse figures as black actress and LGBT activist Whoopi Goldberg and Meghan McCain, the daughter of recently deceased Republican Senator John McCain, an anti-Trump conservative.
What is the role of social networks?
American public opinion is increasingly seeking information from social media. In 2018, 68% of adult Americans had a Facebook account and 73% viewed the Youtube platform. Twitter, Linkedin, Snapchat, Instagram and Whatsapp are also very present. These uses are facilitated by the ubiquity of smartphones. In 2019, almost half of adult Americans reported getting information on Facebook and almost two-thirds reported using social media as a whole.
However, social networks, which put journalists and readers on the same level, do not allow for efficient sorting of information. Far from creating a more transparent society, and therefore more moral, as their creators promised, they encourage the dissemination of rumors and conspiracy theories.
The 2016 presidential campaign provided an example of these abuses. The American intelligence services established that Russian "troll factories", in particular the Internet Research Agency located in Saint Petersburg, had created false Internet sites in English and multiplied the computer bots (systems of automatic sending of information). emails and Facebook messages) intended to spread inflammatory infox to millions of American voters.
Even though Prosecutor Mueller's investigation concluded in March 2019 that there was no evidence of collusion between Donald Trump and Russian interests during his 2016 election campaign, it is clear that the efforts of the hackers Russian IT then came to strengthen those of Donald Trump's campaign team.
The latter had indeed hired the British company Cambridge Analytica, which stole the personal data contained in the Facebook accounts of 70 million Americans, to engage in massive and hyper-targeted political marketing in order to weaken the candidacy of Hillary Clinton and promote that of Donald Trump.
How is the fight against fake news organized?
Academics and journalists have been mobilizing for several years to counter the spread of rumors and false news. D. Trump's victory in November 2016 only redoubled their efforts.
As early as 2015, the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, a Florida-based school of journalism, created an "international fact-checking network" which offers a code of conduct that media around the world can adhere to if they choose. The Center for Information Technology and Society at the University of California at Santa Barbara conducts extensive research on infox and offers a "citizen guide against fake news."
At the Washington Post, reporter Glenn Kessler maintains an audit column with a classification system, the "pinocchio." Until recently, there were four levels, ranging from "slight understanding with the truth" to deliberate lying.
Since December 2018, a new level has been added, the “bottomless pinocchio”, which refers to false and misleading claims that have been made by the same person more than twenty times. Only Donald Trump has risen to this level. The journalist awarded him fourteen in December 2018, ranging from financing the wall he wants to erect on the border with Mexico to the amount of contracts he has made with Saudi Arabia.
These efforts to restore some semblance of truth, however, remain ineffective. First, because verification and rectification take time, even though the President is capable of making outrageous allegations at a very rapid pace. Often, when the serious media publish the true facts after carrying out their investigative work, public opinion pays no attention to it, because the President has in the meantime launched a new infox or insulted political figures or politicians. minorities.
"Citizens now operate in 'information silos': not only do they choose which Twitter or Facebook accounts they want to follow, but the applications themselves, through algorithms, present them with information that they think is relevant. they will please them. "
Then there is a perception bias, because only people who already doubt the validity of the President's words are receptive to the reestablishment of the truth. The supporters of D. Trump, already convinced by his infox, are not sensitive to a new version of the facts. Rather, they see the verification effort as an expression of a great media conspiracy.
This is all the more so as citizens now operate in “information silos”: not only do they choose the Twitter or Facebook accounts they wish to follow, but the applications themselves, through algorithms, present them with information. information they think they will like. Conspirators are therefore unlikely to be exposed to reasonable rhetoric.
As a result, some observers wonder whether it might not be better to ignore certain fake news so as not to draw attention to them with denial. This is to avoid what is called the "Streisand effect". In 2003, American singer Barbra Streisand sued the author and broadcaster of an aerial photo of her Malibu property, sparking immense public interest in her property ...
Finally, ironically, the very meaning of the term fake news has been hijacked by Trump. As shown in a presidential tweet from May 2018, infox does not in his eyes mean misleading information, but simply information that is unfavorable to him. This is how he can treat mainstream media, such as CNN, as fake news.
How is American public opinion reacting?
American public opinion has developed a strong distrust of the media, as shown by annual surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center, an independent and non-partisan think tank. This development seems to go hand in hand with the loss of confidence that Americans have developed in all of their institutions.
This mistrust is nevertheless much stronger on the Republican side. Thus, according to the Pew Research Center, 82% of Democrats and only 38% of Republicans believe that the media play a guardrail role, preventing a politician from committing irregularities. If 68% of Americans consider the media to be partisan, favoring information and analyzes favorable to their camp, they are in fact 86% of Republicans and 52% of Democrats to share this opinion. And only 12% of Republicans versus 35% of Democrats believe the national media to be trustworthy.
Likewise, the idea of a disconnection between the media and the population is more present on the conservative side: 73% of Republicans believe that the media “do not understand people like them” against 40% of Democrats (58% for the total of Americans). What is more, this impression remains above 70% among all Republicans, regardless of their media practice, age, gender and level of education - while this impression varies between 27% and 47% across sub-groups. democratic groups.
This idea that the media are disconnected from the realities of citizens is in line with D. Drump's criticism of the “big progressive media”, which according to him would be elitist, enemies of the middle classes and would seek above all to harm his action.
Popular mistrust is also evident in social networks and online media. In the wake of the revelations of Russian interference and data theft by Cambridge Analytica, 54% of adult Facebook users say they changed their security settings on the platform in the previous year, according to a survey in May. June 2018 by the Pew Research Center.
Likewise, 42% of these users have been off their account for at least several weeks, and 26% have removed the app from their mobile phone in the past year. In total, 74% of adult Facebook users have adopted one of these measures.
Logically, social media should arouse more mistrust among Democratic voters - whose candidate Hillary Clinton suffered from online influence policies during the campaign. However, the work of the Pew Research Center shows that it is again the Republicans who are most suspicious of information received on social networks. For 57% of those polled in the summer of 2018, the news presented there is largely inaccurate - including 72% among Republicans and 46% among Democrats.
