They Don’t Know How To Quit Him
By
The New York Times coverage of Donald Trump stands out but is also representative of much of his coverage. Tidy up his word salad so that it sounds like it emerged from thought, skip over the blatant racism and sexism. A groupiness and defensiveness among reporters that is almost creepy.
Susan Faludi reviews “The Girls on the Bus,”a television series created by Amy Chozick and Julie Plec and Chasing Hillary: On the Trail of the First Woman President Who Wasn’t, by Amy Chozick in the August 15 New York Review of Books. Some of her observations of the press coverage of Clinton’s campaign seem relevant to coverage of Trump’s. Amy Chozick was assigned by the New York Times to cover Clinton’s campaign.
[Chozick’s] campaign analysis was often based on what she or others “felt” about the candidate, a method that could veer into “snark and sarcasm disguised as” substance: Clinton had “likability issues,” suffered a “trust deficit,” lacked schmoozability with reporters, exhibited only a “snippet of introspection,” felt “most at ease around millionaires, within the gilded bubble,” and needed “to work on appearing more natural and accessible.” When Clinton’s staff endeavored to make her more accessible, Chozick (under the headline “Hillary Clinton to Show More Humor and Heart, Aides Say”) deemed the efforts cringeworthy, asserting that “attempts to introduce Mrs. Clinton’s softer side to voters have backfired,” before quoting a GOP strategist saying that Clinton’s lack of “authenticity” was “dooming” her.
Why was Chozick part of the pile-on?
Chozick didn’t lead the charge; there was an army of reporters around her turning politics into lifestyle and emotional “authenticity” into prejudice—or, in the case of Hillary Clinton, misogyny. But another motive presents itself in Chasing Hillary,and it seems generational—and generational in a subtly gendered way.
In Chasing Hillary, we not only see the candidate through the reporter’s eyes; we uncannily view the reporter through the imagined eyes of the candidate.
Faludi cites Chozick pining for attention from Hillary. Her words sound like someone unrequitedly in love.
The ethos promulgated by The Girls on the Bus and Chasing Hillary andpervasive in so much of contemporary reporting—that the personal can save us from the political, that the world of objectivity will be humanized by the “authentic” feelings and sleeve-worn convictions of its chroniclers—has proved corrosive to journalism’s fundamental purpose: to examine “the system” and hold it accountable.
In today’s campaign we see male (Peter Baker, Michael Crowley) as well as female reporters falling over themselves to present Trump in the best possible light. The reporting by “feel” that Faludi describes is likely a part of why. It’s a tribute to Trump’s ability to manipulate people and a blot on journalism.