Covering Donald Trump has long been a difficult task for journalists in Washington, but his new administration has such a frenetic pace that the challenge has become even more complex. In the panel “Covering Trump 2.0: Challenges facing journalists in Washington, DC”, held Friday, March 28, at the 26th International Symposium on Online Journalism (ISOJ), experienced political journalists shared insights, assessed dangers to democracy and independent journalism, and discussed how the press can rise to the historic moment.
The panel, hosted in the Shirley Bird Perry Ballroom at the University of Texas in Austin, brought together Elizabeth Kennedy, White House editor of the New York Times; Ashley Parker, staff writer for The Atlantic; Eugene Daniels, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association and Washington correspondent for MSNBC; and moderator Evan Smith, co-founder of The Texas Tribune.
A key point raised was the Trump administration’s deliberate strategy of “flooding the zone,” overloading the press and other power structures with multiple simultaneous events. Parker, from The Atlantic, described how this tactic was implemented on the first day of government, with the signing of more than 20 executive orders and three speeches.
“Their attitude was like, screw you. You have to choose. You can either go all in on pardoning the January 6-ers, you can go all in on the immigration executive orders, you can cover him at the balls, you can cover his speeches. But you can’t do all of it,” Parker said. “I feel like we’ve all been scrambling to figure out what to cover, and how to cover.”
Kennedy, from the New York Times, reinforced the need for journalists to recognize and adapt to this strategy. While it is necessary to cover daily events, journalists also need to focus on big stories and structural transformations, she said.
“There’s a million stories, and we have to cover that, but we also need to step back and keep our eyes on the big stories, the big changes. How Trump sees power, how he’s changing the American presidency,” she said. “These are big meaty issues, and I think the danger is being pulled down every day into the minutiae.”
Another element that draws attention is the government’s willingness to challenge democratic norms and conventions, Parker said.
“A lot of a democratic society functions on norms and niceties and social constructs,” she said. “And the thing he understands now is that a lot of that, it turns out, you can run roughshod over.”
Among the examples mentioned is Trump’s attempt to directly interfere with news coverage. Daniels, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, recalled that, in his first term, Trump tried to ban journalists, but was restrained by advisers. Now, that has changed. Daniels explained that the White House is trying to take away from the Correspondents’ Association the power to decide who participates in the press pool, a break with a decades-old tradition.
“Presidents for a very long time, decades, have allowed that relationship to be what it is because they knew that they are stronger if the people who are asking them questions are people who are well informed, people who are best sourced,” Daniels said. “The people that are being covered should not choose the people that are covering them. Period.”
Panelists highlighted how Trump has learned since his first term that he can “bend reality to his will” and that much of democratic society operates based on norms – not rules – that can be ignored. Ashley Parker noted this as a learning experience on the president’s part.
“He has learned the lessons of the 2020 election, which he lost, and the lessons of January 6th, which was a deadly insurrection and attack on the U.S. capital”, she said. “It is that, if he repeats something enough, he can get enough of the American public to believe it.”
Kennedy pointed out how this strategy manifested itself in the recent episode involving the leak of military plans by The Atlantic magazine.
“If I say this information is not classified and no big deal, then it is not classified and it is no big deal. Period, end of story”, she said. “They all just decide, ‘what we say is the reality.’ ”
The homogeneity among members of the current administration constitutes an important difference between Trump’s first and second terms, the members of the panel agreed.
“There are no apostates in this administration. The closing of ranks is easy, everybody is falling in line,” said moderator Evan Smith. “There were people in the last administration who might have actually said on the side, ‘This is bad, this is terrible.’ No one is breaking ranks this time.”
The panelists also addressed how Trump’s strategy of distorting reality affects the credibility of journalism as a whole. Daniels warned that the president not only convinces his supporters of lies, but also makes other people skeptical of politics.
“When we come to folks with real information, verifiable information that we know to be true, people won’t believe it, because the well of truth is poisoned,” he said.
Faced with this challenge, one of Parker’s suggestions was to produce contextual articles, bringing together scattered information and showing how they are linked together. These publications tend to have great repercussions, because readers are “hungry” for content that organizes the informational chaos.
“Something that pulls it all together and explains the details and the scoops, why it matters and in what direction this could go in,” she said.
During the Q&A with the audience, panelists discussed how the influencer ecosystem influences political practices. Daniels noted that while social media platforms may appear to have limited influence among the general public, their impact is amplified.
“The people that actually are paying attention to it are the people who are making the laws,” he said. “Does my grandmother see it? Absolutely not. Does someone’s cousin in Iowa see it? Probably not. But the impact on their life will be felt, because the people that are making the decisions in Washington, D.C. and around the country and leadership positions are paying attention.”
The panel also addressed the challenges faced by local outlets, especially following changes in the relationship between the White House and the Associated Press, which tends to represent many smaller outlets. Kennedy highlighted the importance of local coverage of the impacts of federal decisions.
“You will be the front line of whatever the effects of these decisions in Washington will be,” she said. “Who are the people being affected by this? Who’s being hurt, who’s being helped?”