With the Republican frontrunner Donald Trump poised to receive another 19 months of substantial media attention ahead of the 2024 US presidential election, it is crucial for American media outlets to reconcile with the role sensationalized media coverage of his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns played in the global proliferation of right-wing authoritarian populism.
Throughout the 2016 presidential election, Trump’s term in office, and the 2020 campaign, American journalists, lured by the financial gains of Trump’s divisive rhetoric, continually failed to uphold their responsibility to provide balanced political coverage.
Coverage of his 2016 campaign, in particular, revealed the media’s financially-motivated affinity for sensationalism and the powerful allure of the increased readership associated with Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric and character. The press is expected to justify differing levels of candidate coverage using specific criteria for candidate viability: fundraising levels, endorsements, and polling results. However, even though Trump maintained shortfalls across all three criteria, he received 63% of the media coverage throughout the primaries and 15% more coverage than Clinton during the general election. And, data collected by mediaQuant shows that Trump received more free media coverage than Clinton, Sanders and Cruz combined, the equivalent of $5.6 billion dollars in paid advertising.
Skewed media coverage of Donald Trump has, in this sense, made American journalists complicit in the global increase in democratic backsliding, continually providing a platform through which Trump’s rhetoric has legitimized violent extremism, radicalization and charged narratives surrounding race, nationalism and nativism.
Throughout the Trump era, the U.S. experienced a dramatic shift toward autocratization. According to data from the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) research project, a global social science data collection effort which aims to examine the successes and failures of global democracies, the U.S.’s Liberal Democratic Index score decreased from 0.85 to 0.72 and the country’s ranking among the world’s liberal democracies dropped from 17th to 29th during Trump’s term in office.
Similar trends were experienced globally as 2017 represented a period of democratic crisis during which foundational principles including minority rights, freedom of the press, and free and fair elections, deteriorated. According to V-Dem’s 2018 Democracy Report, the number of countries experiencing democratic backsliding equaled the number of countries making democratic progress for the first time in 40 years, signaling an increase in the momentum of global autocratization. The report also found that the factors which make elections meaningful–freedom of expression and media autonomy–were similarly at risk.
And, although it would be unfair to hold Trump solely accountable for this global democratic recession, a trend which has been ongoing since 2006, his inflammatory rhetoric and actions played an undeniable role in emboldening global authoritarian leaders and augmenting the political acceptability of right-wing demagoguery tactics.
Parallel to the rise of Donald Trump in the United States, populist authoritarian leaders have experienced success in other democracies across the world including Brazil, India and the Philippines.
Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, for example, nicknamed the “Tropical Trump,” found electoral success in 2018 with a platform that borrowed heavily from Trump. The first right-wing Brazilian President, Bolsonaro openly admitted his admiration for Trump and has even adopted his persona at times, making use of similarly inflammatory homophobic, misogynistic and racist comments. Notably, the intense anger of his campaign rhetoric and platform played perfectly with the Brazilian people’s frustration with the ongoing economic crisis and corruption scandals, mirroring Trump’s ability to tap into the economic anger of white working-class voters.
Furthermore, the American media’s obsession with the former president, combined with Trump’s embrace of autocratic leaders from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Russia has created a global environment in which totalitarian regimes are more digestible, emboldening repressive behavior and loosening the constraints on authoritarian leadership. Particularly, in Egypt’s case, Trump’s admiration for President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s leadership style appears to have opened the way for Sisi to crack down on freedom of the press. Employing Trump’s ‘fake news’ rhetoric, in 2018, the country passed a restrictive law thinly veiled as a crackdown on the spread of misinformation.
Before 2018, Egypt had already been using ‘fake news’ charges to prosecute and charge journalists. But, with the new law, their Supreme Council now has the power to suspend websites, fine editors, and require licenses for websites. And, many other countries including Belarus, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Russia, and Singapore have also been inspired by Trump’s ‘fake news’ rhetoric and are similarly using the spread of misinformation as an excuse to clamp down on journalists.
Additionally, the success of Trumpism in America has also inspired an increased use of right-wing demagoguery tactics globally. Across Europe, for example, right-wing populist parties and candidates, willing to capitalize on a growing sense of disillusionment with economic inequality as well as heightened fears of immigration, experienced significant electoral success throughout the two years immediately following Trump’s 2016 victory. The Alternative for Germany, a right-wing, anti-euro and anti-immigration party, won 12.6% of the vote in September of 2017, allowing them to enter the Bundestag for the first time. French far-right candidate Marine Le Pen won 34% of the vote share in the May 2017 presidential election and the far-right party in Sweden became the third largest bloc in their parliament in 2018.
And, beyond figures like Bolsonaro, who openly avow adoption of Trump’s tactics, many other right-wing politicians have more subtly borrowed from Trump, refraining from vocalizing any direct support, but still making strategic use of his demagoguery tactics.
In a study commissioned by the Guardian, for example, Team Populism analyzed the speeches of 138 world leaders and found Theresa May’s rhetoric, British Prime Minister from 2016-2019, to be as populist-leaning as that of Trump, Bolsonaro, and Orbán. In speeches given throughout 2016 and 2017, May, a champion of Brexit, played upon the British working-classes’ disdain for “people in positions of power,” emphasizing the validity of working-class patriotism, as well as their concerns about immigration, crime, and job security. May’s choice to frame her populist discourse around the idea that the liberal elites are ignoring the needs of the common people and continue to betray them by supporting immigration distinctly calls back to the nativist and nationalist discourses that Trump leaned so heavily upon.
Additionally, in 2017, former President of Argentina Mauricio Macri, similarly reproduced Trump’s “America First” rhetoric, making reference to the “criminals” coming to Argentina “to commit offenses” and the need to prioritize Argentines above all others. And, shortly after a string of immigration restrictions from the Trump administration, Macri, an immigrant himself, announced measures allowing the government to more easily restrict the entry and initiate the deportation of immigrants.
However, as Trump prepares for another presidential run and the global democratic recession continues, it is unclear whether the American media has learned from their mistakes. Media coverage of the January 6 insurrection, as well as CNN’s May 11 town hall paint an unpromising picture.
For some experts, Biden’s 2020 victory signaled the beginning of the end of the global popularity of right-wing autocrats. However, American journalists failed to refocus their coverage after the Jan. 6 insurrection, continuing to put Trump in the spotlight. A study conducted by Pew Research Center, which analyzed coverage of Biden’s first 60 days in office across 25 news outlets, found that Trump was mentioned in roughly half of the stories that should’ve been focused on the early work of the Biden administration. And, even as the Biden administration continued to progress through their early days in office, rather than shifting focus to coverage of Biden’s policy goals, reporters remained fixated on Trump.
Furthermore, the May 11 CNN town hall highlighted the ongoing challenges faced by American media outlets in balancing their desire to provide coverage of the former president without giving him free reign to espouse dangerous far-right extremist beliefs. The event essentially turned into a campaign rally for the former president with the audience cheering on his most instigative statements and laughing along as he ridiculed E. Jean Carroll. And, with the backing of a friendly audience, Trump quickly realized that he could say and do whatever he wanted and pounced on every opportunity to steamroll the moderator, Kaitlan Collins.
Facing heavy criticism from the public, CNN defended the town hall as an attempt to allow Trump to speak to a more mainstream audience, removed from the far-right extremist bubble he typically operates in. However, the event has simultaneously been characterized as a calculated effort by CNN leadership to lure back some of the viewership lost to Fox News over the course of Trump’s GOP dominance.
Therefore, as the 2024 presidential primary bids roll in and Trump once again launches on the campaign trail, it seems likely that his ongoing indictments, criminal investigations, and civil trials may lure the media into a repeat of 2016. However, this skewed coverage has tangible impacts not just for American politics, but for the global stage as well, a reality that should encourage American journalists to re-evaluate their pitching instincts, newsroom practices and the necessity of striking an appropriate balance between financial incentives and responsible political coverage.