Donald Trump and ‘Enemies of the People’

THE POLITICS of Trump, poppies and Brexit are stark examples of how news reporting is failing citizens. The key failures are a pretence of objectivity and false attempts at balance rather than a critical engagement with political issues.

Listen to RTÉ doing political interviews. We have the charade of a seemingly angry presenter combatively interviewing politicians, disagreeing with their points even when they are correct.

In the United States, TV and radio coverage favours the ‘journalist as moderator’ approach. The broadcaster referees between the two protagonists, with few hints to the viewer as to the truth or accuracy of the claims being made.

Trump’s hair

To top it off, we have TV chat shows where politicians get a soft sell. They sit and banter with Jimmy Kimmel or Jimmy Fallon (even our Tubs does this). And, on US TV, politicians get to tell jokes, maybe joining in the scripted comedy sketches.

I still can’t forget the image of Jimmy Fallon playfully ruffling Donald Trump’s combover. Couldn’t Fallon have spent those moments of primetime TV asking Trump about global warming or any real issue?

In the US primaries, Donald Trump received more news coverage than any of the other 22 candidates, according to Harvard University research. Trump’s share was at times over 40% of the total election coverage. His poll ratings rose and the other 16 republican contenders began to drop out from the race. Is all of this confusing? Welcome to the mind of the US voter on 8 November.

Maybe all that mattered was that the TV companies had record ratings and increased advertising revenue – 71million viewers watched the results across the major networks with 84million tuning into the first Clinton v Trump debate.

High Court hysteria

Reporting failures and double standards are endemic throughout the news media, and not just in radio and TV. The print and online news media are peddling their own form of distorting news.

3 November saw the British High Court decide that British Prime Minister Theresa May must consult MPs in Parliament before triggering Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, an international agreement ratified by both the Houses of Commons and Lords, before Brexit.

Elements of the British print media went overboard. “Enemies of the People” screamed the Daily Mail front page headline. “The Judges Versus the People” declared the Daily Telegraph, who included three black and white photos of the High Court judges who had the temerity to decide there should be democratic oversight of Britain’s EU exit.

“Who do EU think you are?” was the Sun’s riposte. If you’re thinking you’ve heard that before, they used it in 2011 when they were supporting David Cameron’s negotiations with the EU on the euro because Cameron had stated: “I don’t want to put that in front of my Parliament.” Five years later, the Sun has about-turned and decided the parliament doesn’t matter in this EU debate.

All of these papers profiled the judges and the campaigners who brought the case with an intense focus on Gina Miller. Does it really matter that she is divorced, works in financial services or was born in the former British colony of Guyana. Aren’t all British subjects equal before the law?

Not really. Take the Daily Telegraph’s previous day’s editorial on the decision by Westminster Home Secretary Amber Rudd not to hold an inquiry into the 1984 police attacks on striking coal miners at Orgreave.

“Doubtless the tactics used were heavy-handed” a 3 November Telegraph editorial conceded before arguing: “No purpose would have been served by revisiting this story 30 years later, other than to rewrite the history of the period in order to justify the actions of the National Union of Minworkers.”

It finished with:

“The Left wants to redefine events such as Orgreave to perpetuate a sense of grievance with the end of state socialism in the Eighties.”

Wow!

The poppy and the Cookie Monster

Another topic that got distorted news coverage is FIFA’s refusal to sanction poppies on English and Scottish international soccer players’ kit. Strangely, there was little debate on the slavish demands that TV presenters and guests wear the poppy even though the Royal British Legion is adamant it should be a voluntary act.

To see how farcical this is, watch Sky Sports NFL American football coverage in November with all the presenters wearing poppies.

Sky News ‘star’ presenter Kay Burley took to Twitter to publicly call out Daily Mirror Associate Editor Kevin Maguire – a regular guest on Sky – for not wearing his poppy as early as she does. A weary Maguire repeated his answer of the previous four years that he wears his poppy the week of Remembrance Sunday.

Some diligent stage hands were busy behind the scenes at the BBC to ensure that their guests were covered with the requisite poppy. Strictly Come Dancing stars were filmed in rehearsals on different days in several practice outfits but each with a poppy prominent.

On BBC TV’s One Show, even Sesamie Street’s Cookie Monster – a puppet! – was press-ganged into wearing a poppy.

“The Cookie Monster was made to wear a poppy on the One Show last night,” Dara Ó Briain tweeted in response. “I am choosing to regard this as satire, and thus genius.”