Back in the spring, when Donald Trump first started making noise about a presidential bid, CNN President Jeff Zucker sent a message to his producers: Don’t cover him.
Trump had teased a presidential run many times before — in 1988, 2004, and 2012 — and Zucker had watched each time as the media got played by a bragadocious showman who relished the limelight. Zucker didn’t want CNN to get played again, sources there said.
Then, on June 16, Trump announced that he was, in fact, running for president. Since then, CNN has covered Trump more than 400 times on television and on its website, according to the Nexis database. That’s more coverage than CNN has given to Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker or any other major GOP candidates. It’s even more coverage than CNN has given to Hillary Clinton.
On Wednesday, one day after landing Clinton’s first campaign interview with a national media outlet, CNN was once again going wall-t0-wall on Trump, aggressively touting an interview with Anderson Cooper across its airwaves and at the top of its homepage.
The dilemma facing CNN is one facing every political media outlet: How much coverage should be given to a notoriously self-aggrandizing business mogul and reality television star who, despite reporters’ contention that he can’t win his party’s nomination, is drawing an enormous audience by offering the media sensational quotes and highly clickable fodder.
“I think a lot of media people thought that if he got in, and eventually fell back in with the afterthoughts, pollwise, the coverage would (finally) taper off to the occasional freak-of-the-week treatment,” Mark Leibovich, the New York Times Magazine correspondent and author of “This Town,” told POLITICO.
That hasn’t happened.
In the polls conducted since his announcement, Trump has finished second both nationally and in the early states of Iowa and New Hampshire. Barring a precipitous decline over the next few weeks, it is looking very likely that Trump will not only appear at the first Republican presidential primary debate in Cleveland, on Aug. 6, but that he will be closer to center-stage than some of his more politically experienced rivals.
For that reason, many editors believe Trump should be covered as aggressively as any other candidate. It’s presumptuous for the media to decide who may or may not win the nomination, they say. While it’s true that polling doesn’t tell the whole story — at this point in 2011, Michele Bachmann was polling even higher than Trump is today, and Trump is viewed notoriously unfavorably by the Republican establishment — many editors believe outlets must simply report on the presidential campaign as it unfolds.
“In my view, making decisions solely according to who may win the nomination is the worst way to cover a presidential election,” said Steven Ginsberg, senior politics editor at The Washington Post, which has been covering Trump aggressively for several months. “A whole lot happens on the way to the nomination and you can’t explain what’s happening with the candidates or the country without being on top of all of it.”
That is the view Trump’s office holds as well: “Mr. Trump is deserving of all the coverage that he is receiving,” Trump spokesman Michael Cohen said. “Those that question his qualifications are probably unqualified to be journalists themselves. The fact is, Mr. Trump has built a $10 billion-plus empire, employs thousands of people, has worked with many leaders around the globe successfully and is considered one of the best negotiators in history. These are all qualifications essential to being a great president.”
Still, many political journalists chafe at the way the media has helped to fuel Trump’s rise. The outpouring of coverage is an example, some say, of how news outlets’ desire for ratings and traffic has diminished editorial judgment. Stories about Trump draw abnormally high viewership and readership, and many reporters fear that editors are commissioning Trump pieces solely to draw more eyeballs.
“I get it. Trump saying crazy shit is candy, and ‘How do you respond to (fill in the crazy shit Trump said)’ is easy,” one prominent political journalist said. “But let’s be honest about what this is about.”
“Donald Trump is not a serious candidate and the candidates polling near him aren’t being covered the same way,” another prominent political journalist said. “It’s one thing to cover it, wholly another to be obsessed by it.”
CNN’s Zucker declined to comment for this piece. Political editors at CNN, NBC News and The New York Times did not respond to requests for comment.
The fact that many of Trump’s public remarks are so outlandish only frustrates reporters further. It’s one thing to cover a candidate, they say, it’s another to let him make statements that may have no basis in fact. For weeks, Trump has been embroiled in a controversy stemming from his questionable claim that Mexican immigrants are “rapists” and criminals. Those statements led to outrage among Latino groups, but when Trump told NBC News this week that he would “win the Latino vote,” they ran that headline on the top of their homepage.
“I get that it’s easier than explaining the impact of the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” one of the frustrated journalists said of NBC’s interview, “but come on.”
An irony not lost on reporters is that, by pumping up Trump, media organizations are giving a microphone to one of the nation’s most outspoken media critics. Trump is unabashed in his criticism of news outlets and journalists when he perceives bias, often taking to his Twitter account to lambaste anyone who hasn’t given him positive coverage. In the wake of NBCUniversal’s decision to cut business ties with him over the remarks about Mexican immigrants, he publicly accused the network of supporting illegal immigration.
The admonitions against the media only add insult to injury for reporters who can hardly contain their frustration with Trump’s spot in the limelight. On Tuesday, in the wake of CNN’s Hillary Clinton interview, New York Times political reporter Michael Barbaro declared that the entire nation was, like Clinton, “very disappointed” in Trump — an outburst that seemed to ignore Trump’s standing in the polls.
Reporters’ feelings aside, Trump has clearly established an appeal among some voters, and reporters who travel to states like New Hampshire have heard voters speak glowingly about the candidate’s bluntness.
“I keep telling everybody don’t ever laugh at Donald Trump,” Fredrick Rice, a former member of New Hampshire’s General Court, recently told POLITICO. “When you sit there in front of him, that guy makes a lot of sense and there’s not a doubt in your mind if he says he can do something he can do it.”
“I love him,” said Jeanne Sangenario, director of Seacoast Republican Women, who was also on Mitt Romney’s New Hampshire women’s leadership team in the 2008 and 2012 cycles. “I know he would take no baloney from anybody from any world leader and he would get things done and the economy would come back big time, he would get it done. No two ways about it.”
For editors like Ginsberg, at The Washington Post, ignoring such voter sentiment would be tantamount to a dereliction of journalistic duty.
“Trump’s rise in the polls speaks to his appeal,” Ginsberg explained, “but it also says a lot about America in the summer of 2015. Who are the people that are attracted to him? Why? What does that say about the Republican Party?”
Ginsberg also sees a valuable storyline in Trump’s remarks about Mexican immigrants and the debate it has started on the right.
“His statements on immigration have led to a vigorous and revealing discussion about the issue among other candidates and within his party,” Ginsberg said. “Whether any of that means Trump is a significant factor in Iowa or New Hampshire six months from now, I have no idea. But he is clearly one now, and our coverage will continue to reflect that.”
For the foreseeable future, then, Trump will continue to make headlines, whether reporters like it or not.
“He’s performed well in polls, which has continued to ensure that he will, and should, get attention,” Leibovich said. “He clearly has a constituency, at least so far, whatever it’s made of, so I’m guessing that will continue to drive coverage for as long as that lasts.”
Hadas Gold contributed to this report from New Hampshire.