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‘Is it all the media’s fault?’ – post-truth politics and the media in a digital age

Dr Agnes Gulyas, Reader in Digital Transformations, looks at the role the media play in politics, focusing on the current US Presidential election. 

In the current US Presidential race Donald Trump has accused the “disgusting and corrupt media” of representing him and his campaign dishonestly and falsely. He claimed that if “media covered me honestly and didn’t put false meaning into the words I say, I would be beating Hilary by 20%”. Mr Trump arguably exemplifies post-truth politics which is based on reliance on assertions and feelings rather than facts and seems to be focusing on reinforcing rather than addressing prejudices. His political campaigning, style and communication marks a departure from practices of previous presidential candidates.

However, with blaming the media, Mr Trump is following a long held tradition among politicians who are trailing in the polls, or who have found themselves in the middle of an uncomfortable scandal. For these politicians, media are easy scapegoats and blaming them is a logical, if cynical, way to try to divert attention from themselves. These types of accusations are often vague with a hint of a conspiracy theory. Even their use of the word ‘media’ is ambiguous, as the term is so broad and all-encompassing it can refer to anyone who produces any type of media content. I suspect though Mr Trump’s criticism is really aimed at news media that have published unfavourable stories of him and his campaign.

From their point of view, however, these news outlets follow traditional functions of media and journalism in democratic societies: to provide information and analysis, hold politicians accountable and offer balanced news reporting. There can and certainly are issues with how news media report on and represent certain individuals, groups of people and events. There are examples of misrepresentations, especially of those societal groups who are in minority, lack power or underprivileged. There are also examples for lack of balanced news reporting. For example, several studies show that the coverage of the EU Referendum campaign earlier this year was heavily biased towards the Leave side in a large section of the UK print media.

However, the media are not a monolithic all-powerful institution. Political debate and public discourse agendas in democratic societies are shaped by the interdependent, hybrid relationships between politicians, media and the public. The debate about the effects of media, including the influence news coverage has on how people vote, has a long history and it is one of those questions that cannot be conclusively answered scientifically. The dominant view on the issue is that the news media do not tell people what to think but they have an influence on what people think about through framing and influencing public debate agendas.

This agenda-setting role, however, is arguably changing in our digital age where post-truth political culture is increasingly prevalent. Traditional ways of accessing news are shifting as news audiences are becoming more fragmented and news consumption on mobile and via social media platforms are rising. But the digital news environment does not automatically provide balanced news coverage for the audience, and relevant information and analysis could be difficult to find. On social media people tend to communicate in echo chambers with others who have similar views to themselves. Although we can access more information and analysis than ever before, there are indications that too much information can lead to greater confusion especially when facts, opinions and feelings are blurred, as they are in a post-truth political culture.

Instead of blaming the media, politicians should focus on ensuring that all of us continue to have access to news media that provide quality information and analysis, hold politicians accountable and offer balanced news reporting. The need for such news media and journalism is as important in the digital age as it was in the analogue epoch.

The nuclear Donald Trump: A peculiarly British anxiety?

Ahead of the US election on 8 November, Kevin Ruane, Professor of Modern History, reflects on the nuclear anxieties associated with a possible Trump presidency. 

In August this year, no less than 50 Republican national security experts aired their fears should Donald Trump become President and thus gain access to the USA’s awesome arsenal of nuclear weapons. ‘If we have them, why can’t we use them?’, Trump repeatedly asked one senior briefer. (Independent, 9 August 2016).

The British government is also doubtless in a state of agitation and anxiety at the prospect of a Trump finger on the proverbial nuclear “button”. Then again, since the dawn of the nuclear age in 1945, UK governments have routinely succumbed to nuclear nervousness around the time of US presidential elections. Trump might be more alarming than most White House hopefuls, but he is in distinguished company when it comes to arousing concern in the corridors of British power.

For much of the Cold War, the United Kingdom was a primary target for Russian (Soviet) nuclear attack if “hot war” broke out. True, there was not much to be done if the Soviets launched a surprise attack. But what of the Americans? Here we find plenty of evidence of British worries that recklessness, provocation or miscalculation by Washington could bring on a general war with Russia which would leave the UK a radioactive ruin while America possibly went unscathed.

In November 1952, for example, the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, was delighted by the presidential triumph of his old wartime comrade-in-arms, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. At the same time, Churchill privately confessed that ‘this makes war much more probable’.

What frightened Churchill was not Eisenhower, a sane and sensible man. Rather, it was the Republican party in general, out of office for twenty years and populated (so many in Britain believed) by anti-communist fundamentalists bent on using America’s great nuclear advantage to coerce the Soviet Union into agreeing to an international settlement on Western terms.

In the event, Eisenhower confounded British doubters and held the Republican right-wing at bay while shaping a US nuclear policy far more measured and statesmanlike than his party’s electoral rhetoric had suggested. “Ike”, though, had a dodgy heart, and that troubled the British. ‘We must hope that Gen. Eisenhower stays alive’, wrote one senior Foreign Office official at the end of 1952, otherwise his Vice-President would be in the charge of nuclear weapons. And who was that? A certain Richard M. Nixon.

UK governments have usually been more anxious about Republican than Democratic presidents in the nuclear age: aside from Eisenhower, Nixon in 1968 and Reagan in 1980 caused tremors in and beyond Whitehall. But even in these instances, wisdom and decent judgement mostly prevailed. After all, the Cold War remained just that, a cold war.

As for a President Trump, I suspect that Theresa May’s government is today experiencing the same nuclear nervousness as its predecessors, but in more acute form thanks to “the Donald” factor. In the past, incendiary nuclear rhetoric by would-be presidents has seldom crystallized into policy following victory. But what of Trump? Here the fear will be that Trump will live out or live up to his rhetoric. But with a new Cold War in the offing with Putin’s Russia (and like the old Cold War, this one has real war potentialities), now is not the time for hot-heads in the Oval Office.

Then again, we may be worrying unduly. Trump wants a ‘special relationship’ with Putin, he says. In which case, we may be able to shelve some of our nuclear worries if Trump wins on 8 November and get on instead with dealing with the consequences of his craven appeasement of Russia.

Professor Kevin Ruane, Professor of Modern History at Canterbury Christ Church University, has recently published his latest book, Churchill and the Bomb (2016), Bloomsbury.