News analysis Why the US media struggles to cover President-elect

The impending Trump presidency is stirring up disquiet in the American media, which has still not quite figured out how to cover an unconventional political leader given to half-truths, wild exaggerations and impromptu threats.

- Bhagyashree Garekar

WASHINGTON -

A decade after he rode down the escalator in Trump Tower in New York in 2015, the US media has tried mightily to inject "normalcy" into Trump coverage. Some outlets have adopted a sneering, exasperated tone, while others have tried to fact-check him in real time.

In the lead-up to his 2024 election campaign, the newspapers and TV networks grappled with how to cover his hours-long stump speeches as they sought to profit from the interest he evoked.

Live coverage, for example, meant that his inaccuracies went unchallenged.

Sifting through his speeches also presented a problem, as The New York Times discovered. A few weeks before the Nov 5 presidential election, the US' largest newspaper reportedly held an internal meeting to contend with criticism that its reports were "sanewashing" Trump, that is, selectively quoting from his frequently incoherent campaign speeches in ways that made him sound sensible.

Post-election, there is growing concern about a number of lawsuits waged by Trump against news organisations for "false and dishonest reporting" and his avowed intention to "straighten out the press".

Trump's adversarial relationship with the media dates back to his first presidential campaign in 2016. Before that, as a real estate tycoon in New York, he cultivated the press and tried hard to earn mention in gossip columns. He also weighed in on current affairs by taking out full-page advertisements in newspapers.

Casting himself as a nationalist leader standing up for ordinary Americans being short-changed by elites, he frequently describes media critical of him as "fake news" and as an "enemy of the people". After two assassination attempts on him in 2024, he joked that he wouldn't mind if an assassin's bullet passed through the area where the press was seated.

The hostility has not ceased during the transition, with the President-elect "naming and shaming" reports he deems critical of him.