Ever since Donald Trump was elected in 2016, Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic, has been claiming that America has been watching two different movies on the same screen. In one movie, Trump is an ace businessman who’s jumpstarting the economy, cracking down on immigration and improving the tax system. In the other, Trump is a racist idiot who’s flushing American values and integrity down the toilet. There’s hardly any middle ground. MAGA hats are either worn proudly or burned — they’re rarely just hanging up in the closet.
Adams’ analogy addresses the phenomenon of partisan news media, an inherent characteristic of journalism that has been cranked up to eleven since Trump took office. The partisan bents of news organizations seem to have become hyper-magnified in the public eye, exacerbating distaste and a lack of confidence in news that doesn’t match up with readers’ political opinions. Unreliable doesn’t mean untrue, in this case, it means unfavorable. The sheer volume of news available combined with the extremely polarizing nature of the Trump Administration allows Americans to tailor their news intake to reinforce their political desires. The media sphere is so muddled that shows that strive for even-handed political discourse now need special names like Left, Right & Center, Allsides or With Friends Like These.
Partisanship in the news is as old as the news itself. A 2014 study from the Pew Research Center concludes, “When it comes to getting news about politics and government, liberals and conservatives inhabit different worlds.” The study found that conservatives tend to rally around one main news source, Fox News, and trust fewer news sources than liberals. Liberals tend to both trust and engage with more sources. Common ground seems to exist only in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, the only source that was trusted more than distrusted across all political leanings. These findings support Adams’s two movie analogy.
For an example of this in action, one must look no further than coverage of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Everything he has been doing since he started his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election has been spun like a dreidel as either a death blow to Trump’s presidency or a meaningless nothing burger. Just take a look at the following headlines about Mueller’s indictment of 13 Russian individuals and three companies announced on Friday, February 16, 2017 (the sources are arranged on a political gradient moving from conservative to middle of the road to liberal):
The Daily Wire: The New Mueller Indictment Against Russians UNDERCUTS Trump-Russia Collusion Claims
Fox News: The latest Mueller indictment does not show Russian collusion by the Trump campaign
LawFare: Russian Influence Campaign: What’s in the Latest Mueller Indictment
New York Times: 13 Russians Indicted as Mueller Reveals Effort to Aid Trump Campaign
Slate: Mitch McConnell Should Be Driven Out of Office for Being a Chump Who Let Russia Humiliate America
Again, it seems that the media aren’t distrusted for getting the facts wrong but for getting the spin wrong.
While partisan polarization isn’t new, it has been exacerbated under Trump, who frequently attacks outlets critical of his administration. Fox News’ Chris Wallace criticized those attacks but also pointed out that outside the opinion section, The New York Times tends to use language more colorful than normal when talking about the Trump presidency. Similarly, a Times video comes awfully close to a negative campaign ad someone opposing Trump would run.
The Times obviously has maintained its commitment to truthful reporting (a headline up on The Times’ website as this article is being written is straightforward: “Trump Calls for Ban on ‘Bump Stocks’ Used to Convert Guns“) but the gestalt of The Times’ reporting on Trump has not hidden its distaste for him.
One of Trump’s most incendiary tweets to date called the news media “the enemy of the American people.” Trump and his supporters claimed he was calling fake news the enemy of the American people and merely calling out those guilty of it, while many others interpreted this as a direct assault on free press and healthy democracy.
A cycle emerges. Trump and conservative politicians with skin in the game brazenly criticize news media that are appropriately critical of his administration and they drive their message home, hard, via incendiary tweets and incessant accusations of fallacy and dishonesty. This is rebuked and further criticized by liberals (duh) and some conservatives (huh?), though left-leaning media takes the majority of the heat from Trump and his constituents.
This turns the media landscape into something like a professional sports rivalry where readers have die-hard allegiances. My team can do wrong, and your team can do no right. Sticking up for the other side and its associated news organizations is seen as treasonous, rather than open-minded. This is why the two movie phenomenon is problematic – it kills discourse and wraps common ground in miles of caution tape.
Since Trump seriously came into the political scene, Democrats’ trust in the media has risen to its highest point in 20 years, while Republican trust has reached a modern low, according to a recent Gallup poll.
If Trump sees the media as an enemy, and he has said so on multiple occasions, then liberals see the media as an ally. If liberals see the media as an ally, then conservatives see the media as an enemy. The poll also points out that Republican trust in the media was highest during the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal in 1998, a time when the media doing its job meant exposing the lies of a Democratic president.
Regardless of how you feel about the Trump Administration, you’ll be able to compile reporting that allows you to watch whichever movie you like. The two movie phenomenon is one of the more confounding challenges facing modern journalism. Developing a solution is tricky, but you can start by picking up a magazine or newspaper whose politics bend away from yours and maybe at least consider the idea that the other side isn’t the enemy. It’s just the other side.
Matt Roberts is a biologist-turned-communications expert who gave up centrifuges and DNA samples for a camera and a reporter’s notebook. He’s recently reported on Native American natural resources issues from the Standing Rock reservation to the Navajo Nation, written for a hunting and conservation magazine and has photographed everything from forest fires to cherry farming. A liberal on paper, Matt identifies with elements of many political persuasions and is convinced that we’d be able to solve a lot of our country’s problems by just talking to one another.
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