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Michael Dunne: I'm Michael Dunne. Does President Trump lie? For many of you listening, that may seem like a silly question, but for journalists, stating that determination is not so cut and dried. Many reporters are trained not to imply intent when talking about a president's words and actions. Therefore, phrases like "misstated," "offered without evidence" or "falsely claimed" take root. Yet some charged with covering the media believe this mindset is outdated while covering a president and a White House unlike any other. Today on the show, you'll meet one of the leading media observers and critics of the national media: Dan Froomkin, editor of Press Watch and a longtime thought leader in the space. Froomkin spares little patience for a press that doesn't sufficiently hold the president's feet to the fire. Dan Froomkin, the editor of Press Watch, an independent website, previously served as editor at Washingtonpost.com and wrote the popular White House Watch. He's also worked for HuffPost and The Intercept. Dan, I've been a fan for a long time. Thank you for coming on and talking with us.
Dan Froomkin: That's great to hear, and my pleasure.
Dunne: It's interesting. I think about the name of your organization, Press Watch. I know a lot of reporters probably feel like, "Hey, we're the watchers. We don't need someone looking over our shoulder." Talk about the importance of being not just a media critic but a media observer as well.
Froomkin: That's a very good distinction, observer versus critic. I think of myself as both. It's interesting you mentioned the White House column I wrote for The Washington Post. This was back at the dawn of the millennium, and I was writing about George W. Bush. The original intent of the column was just to aggregate what people were writing about the White House, a daily summary of what was going on. What I recognized while observing this coverage was that it was missing a lot of things. The press was too willing to grant George W. Bush powers and abilities he did not have. So it made me into a critic as well as an observer. Over the years, what I have seen, unfortunately, is this continued trend of Washington-based reporters for major media outlets just failing at their accountability mission when it comes to covering the White House. They fail to cover it with the skepticism and the need to push back on untruth that I think is warranted for any White House in our history. And then, of course, Trump happened. The sense that what was coming out of the White House was so unreliable, irrational and untrue was something the press couldn't really handle. They keep covering him more or less like a normal president: quoting what he says and, if there's some disagreement, quoting that too. That's sort of how I evolved from an observer into a critic, watching the media fail to seize the moment it had.
Dunne: Carrying that forward to the Trump administration, I want to talk about the language the press uses, especially with regard to the current administration. For example, when discussing his characterization that he technically won the 2020 election, they often note that it's not true, but talk about the language. They say things like "he made the baseless claim" or "offered without evidence," as opposed to saying he's lying. I know a lot of journalists are trained that lying implies intent, and it's not their job to assess intent. But when something is stated over and over again, when does it cross over into lying?
Froomkin: Exactly. And it's become particularly relevant lately, as Trump is lying about how the California election is rigged. Again, the same language from these journalists keeps coming up. There was an article in The New York Times just today. It said his claims are baseless. They're not baseless. They're malicious, intentionally deceptive. They have a goal, which is to spread chaos and get people to not believe what they see with their own eyes. Yes, the lying thing. I was patient with reporters for a long time about using the word "lie," because, as you said, reporters are trained to think you can't call something a lie unless you know the person intended to deceive. Well, at this point, that's not really in question anymore. Even the Washington Post fact checker, who was one of the people who avoided the word "lie" and used terms like "three Pinocchios," finally got to the point where, if we have pointed out this is not true this many times and he continues to say it, then we can call it a lie. These claims about election rigging are lies, and it is really damaging for journalists not to call them that. It normalizes them. It makes it so that people saying the election is rigged can be written off as just a little bit wrong or completely misinformed. They are listening to lies, and that's got to be said in those words.
Dunne: You mentioned chaos. Much has been made of what seems like a strategy by Trump and the administration to flood the zone with chaos and unprecedented policies, actions and words. For a national reporter, talk about the challenge of keeping up with that and perhaps not doing a good enough job to pause and say, "Hold on, let's talk about X, and what the president is saying, and perhaps lying about."
Froomkin: It is an enormous challenge. The first instinct when Trump says something outrageous, which he will do many times a day, is to say, "Hey, Trump just said this thing." That's a reasonable news reporter's response. But that's actually doing his job for him. The coverage needs to make it very clear, not just that he said it, but that it's not true. There's this thing called the truth sandwich, where you start with the true statement: the election was not rigged. Then you say Trump claims it was rigged. Then you say he not only lacks evidence, but this is a lie he has been spreading for years in an attempt to sow chaos and claim victory where he can't have it.
Dunne: You brought this up a bit earlier: his appearance on Face the Nation, where he stormed out of an interview because the journalist was saying he had no evidence about fraud in California elections. What does it mean to a nation when the commander in chief storms out of an interview and then says he was attacked? Even some of his defenders online are saying he really put her in her place. How do you see it?
Froomkin: I think it's long overdue. When you sit down to do an interview with Donald Trump, you have some tough questions to ask yourself. What's the point? He's going to lie. What are you trying to accomplish? I've been encouraging reporters who have this rare opportunity to sit down with him to really say: "Look, you have a problem with the truth. These are things you have said that are absolutely, clearly untrue. The evidence is overwhelming. Why do you continue to say this?" Confront him with the reality that very rarely gets through his bubble. He is surrounded by sycophants, and he only goes to events where people will applaud him, with the very bizarre exception of the other night at the NBA.
Dunne: Being booed at the New York Knicks game.
Froomkin: Yes. For journalists who have the opportunity to sit down with him, they really need to confront him. So I was glad that Kristen Welker did. And I'm not surprised at his reaction. He has no ability to respond to that sort of thing, and I think it showed that he can have a temper tantrum when confronted with someone who won't support his reality-defying worldview.
Dunne: I'm curious about your take on this. A famous sports editor once said, "We don't broadcast sports, we broadcast competition." I think about how, even setting aside Fox News, you look at CNN and it seems like a lot of their popular reporting isn't necessarily journalism. It's conflict: putting different voices together and letting it become a free-for-all. What's your take on that kind of journalism today?
Froomkin: It's interesting. That model was a created thing over the last several decades. They would literally put two people with opposing views and say "go at it." All their coverage was very much one side versus the other side. Now I think it's an inevitable result of Trumpism, this torrent of lies and hatred. You have to respond as a journalist with some truth-telling, and so that's the conflict now. I don't think you see quite as much of the crossfire CNN model. But can I go back to one thing you mentioned? You asked how journalists can handle the torrent of it all, and whether they can ever take a step back. The answer is: sometimes they do. There has been some very good journalism about Donald Trump. It tends to appear in news analyses where reporters are taking a breath and saying things like there are reasons to be concerned about Donald Trump's mental state. There was an article in The New York Times a few weeks ago where Peter Baker, sort of the dean of the White House correspondents, said there are a lot of people who think he is not well.
Dunne: You've been one of the loudest voices calling on journalists to do that, to say that what he's doing right now doesn't rise to the level of rational thought.
Froomkin: Right. These journalists know that. And when they're given the opportunity to step back and write an analysis, they do a much better job of addressing it. But it's the daily reporting, the incessant torrent driven by Trump's statements and actions, that is lacking context. That context is essential. I've argued that there ought to be some boilerplate language journalists use when quoting Trump. Something like: Trump often lies, often contradicts himself, has been known to change his mind, and there are serious concerns about his mental capacity. These are all things that are absolutely essential context every time a journalist quotes him on anything. Most recently, reporters keep quoting him saying an Iran deal is right around the corner, that it's going to be great, that Iran will give up nuclear weapons. You can't ethically quote him saying that without noting he has said this will be resolved within two or three days at least 38 times on record. CNN actually did a good story on exactly that.
Dunne: Obviously that drives markets and the cost of oil. Pull that thread a little more. Because of the way daily reporting works now, on today, off today, on today, off today. What does it do to the American consumer of news?
Froomkin: It's very confusing. Most importantly, it normalizes the abnormal. I think it gives people a reason not to vote or not to stand up. As we head into the midterm elections, I'm saying this not as a partisan, but as someone who believes in the existence of reality and the need to defend it: there has to be a full-scale rejection of Trumpism, of MAGA. As long as news organizations cover Trump as if he were still normal, or as if there were some legitimate argument to be had about whether the election is rigged, I think it allows people to sit back and not act. And it's really important that Americans act in November.
Dunne: In your opinion, especially with the national press, does bullying work for Trump? Do you feel that sometimes journalists, their editors and their bosses are afraid of raising his ire?
Froomkin: Yes, absolutely, and at all different levels in different ways. So much of the national media is now run by large corporations that are enormously affected by Trump's actions, especially as they're all trying to merge with each other. There's no question that corporate-level bullying works. We've seen it. They've made these outrageous cash settlements in cases, lawsuits that were laughable. Does it work at the executive level? I think it does. There's a sense in which they don't want to be the ones going to corporate and saying, "We just did something Trump's going to be really mad at." I don't think anybody at a responsible news organization is getting a direct order from their boss saying, "Be easy on Trump." But there's a path of least resistance, and the path of least resistance is stenography. That's not going to get you in trouble. Using the kinds of adjectives, adverbs and dependent clauses I'm talking about can get you in trouble. And look at Kristen Welker. She's not the paragon of virtue as far as I'm concerned, but she did a good job pushing back against Trump's lies about elections. And at the end, she said, "Can we do this again?" There is a need for access. Without access, reporters lose their stature, their effectiveness and their standing in the eyes of their employers. And you can't get access to him if you're going to push back.
Dunne: To that point, obviously many people criticize access journalism. But being in the room and getting an interview like that was important. Can access journalism and accountability coexist?
Froomkin: I've always thought that a good national newsroom ought to have a good cop/bad cop White House team: one person playing by the access rules, one who isn't. On top of that, access has to come with something in return. Right now the equation is: in return for access, you get lied to. I would like to know, for instance, what took Donald Trump to Walter Reed Hospital last week. You would think that people with all this access to the Trump orbit would be able to report on that. But they can't, because access only gets them so far. Access gets them access to lies, not to truth.
Dunne: Do you think that, because of the era we're in, the Trump era, the media can go back to a more honest and accountable time of doing its job?
Froomkin: I sure hope so. I'm not terribly optimistic. I actually felt like when Biden came into office, it would have been a great time for journalists to say, "OK, we need to establish some accountability rules going forward, so that the next Trump, should there be one, can't do what he did." There ought to be transparency inside the White House, regular briefings, ways to open up the decision-making process. That didn't happen. Where we go from here is tough. I suppose the good news is that reporters will want to be tough on the next president to show they weren't just tough on Trump and not on Democrats. They should be tough on the next president. I really don't know where it goes from here.
Dunne: My last question for you, Dan, is about tone. Obviously this president, if he doesn't like a question, he's going to attack the interviewer.
Froomkin: It's not just hostile. It's misogynistic as well. Most of it has been directed at women. I think it's racist. A lot of it has been directed at Black women. What should the press corps do? My answer is: at the very least, the next reporter should repeat the question that got their colleague attacked and demand an answer. That's the least I could ask for.
Dunne: He's Dan Froomkin, editor of Press Watch and longtime observer and critic of the media. Dan, it's been a pleasure talking to you. Thanks so much for coming on.
Froomkin: Thank you. It's been great.
Dunne: That's the show for today. All episodes of Oregon on the Record are available as a podcast at KLCC.org. Tomorrow on the show, you'll hear from a reporter about the huge energy and environmental impacts of the state's massive data center growth. I'm Michael Dunne, host of Oregon on the Record. Thanks for listening.
