Trump’s lies should be the headline

Mainstream media has normalised Donald Trump’s lies, allowing deceit to become a powerful political weapon with little accountability, writes Dr Victoria Fielding.

LYING IS NOT a feature of the Trump political phenomenon; it is the core of it.

Yet, rather than presenting President Donald Trump’s lying, his dishonest nature, his prolific deceit, as a national scandal, mainstream journalists have just accepted it and seem totally immune to its destructive democratic damage.

This acceptance has normalised Trump’s lying throughout his decade in politics, including his two presidential terms, so much so that it goes almost entirely unremarked in media coverage.

This raises the question: why would Trump stop lying when it’s working so well for him to continue to lie? If Trump is not going to be held to account for lying and he is benefiting so greatly from it, why stop?

A pertinent example of the destructive normalisation of Trump’s lying is this analysis by The New York Times of Fox News’ caution over airing what they refer to as Trump’s ‘stock claims about a stolen election’.

CHRIS HEDGES: Trump’s assault on the midterms threatens American democracy

Chris Hedges warns that Trump’s efforts to reshape the US electoral system threaten the midterms and could leave mass resistance as the final defence of American democracy.

It is crucial to note that Trump’s ‘stock claims about a stolen election’ are egregious, anti-democratic lies – false allegations – that the Democrats stole the 2020 Election. These lies helped spur the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by crazed MAGA supporters. Even after that, Trump continues to propagate these lies and continues not to be criticised for it.

Even though The New York Times piece does not name Trump’s stolen election allegations as lies, it is implied throughout the piece that they are indeed untrue, because the article reports that Fox News executives are desperately trying to get their hosts to stop repeating these specific lies.

Note, this reticence to propagate Trump’s lies is not because Fox News cares about the damage Trump’s deceit does to American democracy. They do not care about the unfair playing field it creates when a major “news” outlet uses its power to attack one side of politics to benefit the other. They also do not care about all of Trump’s lies, just the rigged election ones.

Fox News’ concerns about Trump’s election lies derive from the potential financial cost of these lies. This is because they were forced to settle a defamation case against Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic.

These voting machine companies had their reputations so badly tarnished by Fox News over the many months Fox hosts gleefully participated in Trump’s campaign of election lies that they were forced to settle two defamation cases, with Fox paying Dominion Voting Systems US$1.6 billion (AU$2.3 billion) and Smartmatic US$2.7 billion (AU$3.8 billion).

To avoid these defamation costs in the future, Fox has even gone as far as firing their host and Trump ally Maria Bartiromo. Bartiromo has a history of ardently promoting Trump’s election lies and thus there is presumably a risk she will do so again.

Donald Trump: A presidency of metaphors

Trump has transferred ownership by the people, of the people and for the people to himself.

The New York Times presents all of this information like it is completely normal to have a major news outlet – their major competitor – having to carefully manage their programming and hosts to ensure they’re not sued again for defamation.

However, the normalisation of Trump’s lies goes even further than this. The piece goes on to make the point that Trump may suffer politically if Fox News is no longer willing to perpetuate his ‘wildest election claims’.

Again, let me clarify that when The New York Times says ‘wildest election claims’, what it actually means is lies that undermine democracy. Just to unpack this scenario a little more, The New York Times is admitting that Trump has benefited politically from Fox News promoting his lies and when Fox News see those lies as commercially risky, Trump’s political benefit from those lies will take a hit.

This example, reminiscent of all mainstream news coverage of Trump’s dishonesty, demonstrates that not only are Trump’s lies not called out as lies, or framed as problematic, or used to warn voters that they are being misled by Trump, but instead, they are characterised as a legitimate and valuable political weapon.

At the same time, Fox News is also legitimised as not only historically perpetuating Trump’s lies until it cost them money to do so, but also being a mouthpiece – an advocate – for Trump. Fox News is not a “news outlet”; it is clearly a political campaign platform carried out under the façade of journalism.

Yet, in The New York Times, just like elsewhere in the mainstream media institution, Fox News’ blatant, unrelenting political advocacy on behalf of Trump and against the Democrats goes completely unremarked.

What all this normalisation leads to is that lying in politics and by the media on behalf of politics is never framed as morally wrong, as reprehensible, as something that voters should be angry about. Sometimes lies are called “wild” or “controversial”, but more often they’re referred to benignly as “claims” — suggesting they are just opinions which may have some validity.

JEFF MCMULLEN: Trump attacks the enemy within

Donald Trump’s strategy to maintain a stranglehold on American democracy, Dr Jeff McMullen writes, invokes a century-old fear of communism.

At the same time – and most crucially, alongside not calling out Trump’s lies – mainstream media does not correct these lies. If major news outlets are not even willing to fact-check the President of the United States, it is time journalists stop even pretending to be watchdogs. It is time they acknowledge that they are just as much responsible for the crisis of disinformation plaguing Western democracy as those who create the disinformation that they refuse to name as such.

Trump’s lies have been legitimised in the public sphere for over a decade by mainstream journalists too weak, too scared, too cowed to call them out. Those helping him to lie, like Fox News, are likewise never held responsible for their deceit.

Where voting machine companies can sue for defamation, citizens in a democracy rely on the institution of journalism as their accountability mechanism. This institution has been totally inadequate in guarding against Trump’s lies and has instead emboldened them.

Trump established his political movement through the racist, White supremacist “Birther conspiracy theory” — a campaign of lies about former U.S. President Barack Obama’s country of birth. Mainstream media legitimised these lies, enabling them. And it has enabled Trump’s lying ever since.

The Trump MAGA movement – including its media arm, Fox News – might be the ones responsible for the lying, but it is time mainstream journalists recognised that they are responsible for letting these deceitful actors benefit from lies. Shame on all of them!