As Trump pursues another run at the U.S. presidency, the media and journalists face an important test of their independence and reporting practices. Murrow professor Jennifer Henrichsen cautions against a “business as usual” journalistic approach.
“Journalists must accurately inform citizens and hold power to account if they are to uphold their democratic roles in society,” Henrichsen says. “Journalists can’t do that if they are co-opted by a candidate who uses the media to amplify disinformation.”
As the campaign season intensifies, Henrichsen argues that journalists and their editors need to assess how they cover controversial candidates to ensure their reporting serves the public and democracy. Henrichsen’s research, published today in the International Journal of Communication, reveals how journalists used distancing techniques and mnemonic devices leading up to and following Trump’s electoral win to make sense of Trump and Trumpism and to bolster journalists’ cultural authority at a time when trust in the media was at record lows.
The findings, which draw on a textual analysis of news documents and metajournalistic discourse between 2015-2017, indicate a form of reflexivity in which journalistic practice is justified by relying on discursive distancing techniques like genericization and nominalization and past historical analogies including Goldwater, McCarthyism, and Watergate.
By using strategies of distancing, journalists were able to maintain a sense of normalcy by going about business as usual while continuing an entrenchment of traditional hierarchical power structures. Journalists were also signaling that “this too shall pass” if they performed their reporting as usual by referencing the past through historical analogies.
Rather than relying on distancing techniques or historical analogies to make sense of the present, Henrichsen argues that journalism should become an agent of prospective memory.
“Members of the public need to be reminded what can be done to create the potential futures they wish to inhabit. By becoming an agent of prospective memory, journalism can provide space for change and give presence and visibility to issues in ways that allow citizens to better understand their current reality,” she said. “Doing so will help to ensure journalism remains a trustworthy source of information and fulfills its vital role in society.”