Abstract
Donald Trump’s presidential style has attracted plenty of popular and academic attention, and his tumultuous relationship with the media has often been at the forefront of discussions about the nature and future of American democracy. So what new can a book on the Trump Presidency, journalism and democracy offer? The editor Robert E. Gutsche writes in the Introduction that his hope is that the contributors – academics, professionals and media critics – highlight for audiences the main elements of journalism’s struggle not only with the direct challenges of the Trump administration, but with the underlying social and cultural turns and positions of power that have led to the scary situation in Washington, D.C., which already has lasting implications on everyday lives internationally. (p. 9)
The volume ‘examines the disruptive nature of Trump news – both the news his administration makes and the coverage of it – related to dominant paradigms and ideologies of U.S. journalism’ (p. i). The concept of power lies at the heart of the editor’s conceptualisation of the relationship between the media and ‘fellow institutions of power’ (p. 8). Gutsche talks about the media’s battle to maintain mainstream authority when current governmental and police actions of oppression and subversion operate on the nightly news through rhetoric and political action expressed by a new presidential crew and local representations of discontent with progressive actions taken during the Obama Years. (p. 8)
The book is split into four main parts. Part I, ‘Challenges to Journalistic Norms, Practices, and Social Cohesion’, comprises four chapters exploring power dynamics during the 2016 presidential campaign and subsequent presidency, fake news and the challenged authority of the press, ‘civil war’ in Trump’s America and what Leon Barkho labels ‘haktology’ – ‘the approaches and processes of distracting audiences from violations of personal privacy and independence through press sensalization of hacking and leaks’ (p. 11). Part II, ‘Journalism during Difficult Discourse’, consists of four chapters on news coverage of immigration during Trump’s first 100 days, White-supremacist terrorism, Trump’s racist rhetoric and media narratives of gender. Part III, ‘Trump, Rhetoric, and Understanding Amid Media Fragmentation’, includes three chapters offering a brief history of the Breitbart effect, Breitbart’s #DumpKellogs campaign and Trump’s scapegoating of all things ‘un-American’. Part IV, ‘Journalistic Recovery Post-Trump: Lessons Learned’, comprises four chapters on the rural vote, Trump’s influence on news interest and literacy, journalism ethics and ‘the effects of mediatized hate’ (p. 299). The book ends with the Epilogue in which the editor argues that journalism scholars should use this moment of contestation to go deeper, to position themselves as constituents of a power system, to redesign how we think about integrations of news, politics, behaviour, and power, returning to the days of newsroom ethnographies, of examining traditional gatekeeping processes and practices of hegemony. (p. 323)
All in all, this is an interesting and thought-provoking collection, which unlike many edited volumes is also very coherent.