Too Big to Report?
There is a surreal disconnect between the scope of the scandal and the coverage it has received
This is the last of three stories from last year that I’m updating and reposting while I’m on vacation. I wrote a version of today’s post in April 2022. It asserts that the coup attempt is being covered like any other political story by the mainstream press, not like the biggest scandal in history. Then I speculate a little about why that’s happening. I’ll be back on Friday.
I’ve been thinking about the banks that were considered “too big to fail” during the 2008 economic implosion that became known as the Great Recession. The rationale for bailing them out was that the global economy would go down with them if they collapsed.
In fact, “too big to fail” wasn’t just the rationale for bailing out the banks. It was the condition that halted any consideration of not bailing them out. How could any serious policymaker entertain the economic devastation and suffering that would follow from letting these institutions implode? Discussion skipped over the question of whether the government should step in and went right to the terms of the bailout.
I see parallels between the reach of those banks and the scale and scope of the Trump coup plot. In 2008, with the economy in freefall, there was no time to delve into the rot that had turned once staid financial institutions into something resembling Trump’s Atlantic City casinos. Once the crisis passed, there was no stomach for it.
A serious accounting would have implicated too many well-connected figures, raised questions about holding them responsible, and potentially initiated a discussion about restructuring the global financial order to the detriment of the elites who had been running it for their personal pleasure and profit.
We did get a movie version of the crisis that raised these questions, but nothing close to the scrutiny of journalists and policymakers that could have made a difference.
Now consider the Trump coup. Because we have been privileged to well-placed news leaks from the January 6 investigation, we know that the Capitol insurrection was one key event in an elaborate plot to overturn the election and install the losing candidate. As more information has become public, the contours of the plot have grown wider, but so far the legacy press has been unwilling to say clearly what the facts are telling us.
An entire political party, from the president and his inner circle to members of the House and Senate to the national party committee to financial supporters and affiliated outside groups tried to overthrow a legitimately elected government. They’re still trying.
Think about that for a second. An entire political party was willing to follow their leader to hold power at any cost. Like the financial collapse fifteen years ago, this should be the biggest story of our era if not one of the biggest in our history.
But it isn’t. At least not yet. There is a surreal disconnect between the scope of this scandal and the coverage it has received.
Consider a couple of examples. Just last week (in early April 2022), the former president’s son was revealed to have sent text messages to his father’s chief of staff two days after the election with ideas on how to subvert the Electoral College. In plain English, the president’s son was advocating for a coup even before the election was called.
This sounds pretty significant. Why is this not the topic of around-the-clock political discussion?
Or take the story of Ginni Thomas and her involvement with the coup plotters. That story lasted for several news cycles, but it never come close to dominating them. Here you have the coup seeping into the Supreme Court in the form of a justice who voted to protect evidence of his wife’s “Stop the Steal” activities and who refuses to say he will recuse himself from future cases involving the insurrection.
In an earlier time, a scandal this big would have generated unrelenting coverage. The pressure on Thomas to resign would have become unbearable.
Like the financial collapse fifteen years ago, this should be the biggest story of our era if not one of the biggest in our history.
I think it's reasonable to speculate whether the Trump coup isn’t getting coverage equal to its importance because it implicates half of official Washington. Think about it. You have a mainstay 160-year-old political party engaged in seditious behavior. That behavior touches current elected officials, including prominent party members.
If you’re a reporter, how do you cover a story like that without sounding partisan or taking sides? Without implicating a system that’s essential to your livelihood?
The answer appears to be that you cover it without urgency. You report individual news items but you don’t connect the dots. Like the financial collapse, you don’t let the evidence lead you to uneasy conclusions. You don’t ask the big questions.
Or worse. In an effort to maintain access to Republican sources in advance of the midterm elections (which Beltway observers were confident would return Republicans to power in the House and Senate), CBS News hired Mick Mulvaney as an on-air contributor. Mulvaney, who held several positions in the Trump administration including acting chief of staff, was one of Trump’s more lawless aides and, among other things, let slip that Trump was attempting to extort Ukraine to get dirt on his political opponent.
His appointment was met with pushback from CBS reporters and media critics, but this is how the game has long been played. It’s called access journalism, and you can see how it distorts reporting. How can CBS cover the coup with Mulvaney on its payroll?
Ultimately, it will fall to Democrats to make the case for what happened in such a gripping and entertaining way that journalists will have no choice but to step up their coverage. Reporters take their cues from other elites, so if Democrats decide this is the most important story of the 2022 election then coverage will begin to reflect that.
In an earlier time, a scandal this big would have generated unrelenting coverage.
But you have to wonder just how much we can expect from reporters who are reluctant to implicate their sources in a story that they insist on framing as Democrats versus Republicans, rather than as democracy versus autocracy.
The story of a political party committed to bringing down the constitutional order to stay in power may just be too big to tell. But if the press doesn’t get it right, this time more than the economy will fail.