Yesterday presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump took on the news media. Journalists have questioned him for a few months about a fundraiser during which he claimed to raise $6 million for veterans. The main question was simple, but by most accounts, one that Trump seemed to dodge: “Who got the money?”
If you want the credit for doing good – i.e. news coverage – you should expect the media to report which organization(s) got the money as part of their story.
Yesterday, about four months after the fundraiser, Trump called a press conference to clear the air on to whom the money was donated. He spent most of the 40 minutes criticizing the news media in general and insulting individual members of the press. Words like sleaze, dishonest and “among the worst human beings I’ve ever met” punctuated his remarks.
Perhaps the most revealing comment from Trump was this:
“Instead of being like, ‘Thank you very much, Mr. Trump’ or ‘Trump did a good job,’ everyone’s saying ‘Who got it, who got it, who got it,’ and you make me look very bad. I have never received such bad publicity for doing such a good job.”
This latest twist seems ironic for a person who allegedly faked being his own publicist several times in the 90s in an attempt to secure favorable media coverage. It seems the presidential campaign trail may be a bit too high profile for “John Miller” or “John Barron” to continue the charade. So when you can no longer manipulate the media, an all-out attack may be your only resort.
If I’ve learned one thing about the media in 20+ years in public relations (plus a degree in journalism), it’s that you cannot control a news story. I’m not naive; I know there’s no such thing as perfect objectivity. And I also believe that journalists are human — like the rest of us — and can and do make mistakes.
But I find yesterday’s press conference particularly troubling because it suggests that a Trump who becomes president will continue to attack the press in order to manipulate the narrative. That sounds less like an America with press freedom as one of its founding principles and more like countries where the state controls the media and imprisons (or even kills) journalists who ask tough questions.
Is that really how we make American great again?