How “Trump Trauma” Is Crippling the News Media
- How “Trump Trauma” Is Crippling the News Media
by On Jan. 8, 2017, days before Donald Trump was to assume the crushing burdens of the presidency, he faced a very different kind of problem: Meryl Streep.
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The iconic actress slammed him in her speech accepting the Cecil B. DeMille lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes, attacking him for, among other things, having allegedly mocked a disabled New York Times reporter during the campaign. The next morning, Hope Hicks, the president’s loyal young assistant who was almost always by Trump’s side, pulled out her phone to play footage of Kellyanne Conway on the CNN and Fox morning shows.
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Kellyanne said that charge had been repeatedly refuted and added that if Streep were so concerned about the rights of the disabled, she should have spoken out about a disabled boy who had been badly beaten by young thugs shouting anti-Trump epithets in a video that had been posted on Facebook. Trump loved that answer and started venting about his media coverage.
It was a sneak preview of what would become a constant state of warfare between the new president, his closest aides and the media world — not just journalists and commentators but actors, singers, entertainers and pop-culture figures who often viewed him with outright scorn.
These are not easy words for me to write. I am a lifelong journalist with ink in my veins. And for all my criticism of the media’s errors and excesses, I have always believed in the mission of aggressive reporting and holding politicians accountable.
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But the past two years have radicalized me. I am increasingly troubled by how many of my colleagues have decided to abandon any semblance of fairness out of a conviction that they must save the country from Trump.
Every president gets pounded by the press. But no president has ever been subjected to the kind of relentless ridicule, caustic commentary and insulting invective that has been heaped on Trump. I have a name for this half-crazed compulsion to furiously attack one man. It’s called Trump Trauma.
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