Life in the post-truth era

If Donald Trump wins on Nov. 5, it will be partly because the traditional press failed to present the former president as he truly is. That's the argument put forward by many media critics, who accuse The New York Times, CNN, The Washington Post, and other legacy outlets of "sanewashing" Trump: selectively quoting or editing his rambling, threat-filled, and profanity-laced rally speeches. This habit stems from mainstream news outlets wanting to appear "objective," the argument goes. If they did accurately cover Trump's extremism and bizarre behavior, it would look like they were in the tank for Democrats.

As a result, Trump's repeated pledge to round up and deport millions of undocumented immigrants, whom he has called "animals" and "not human," gets labeled by the Times as "hyperbolic rhetoric" rather than 100-proof authoritarianism. And his weird disquisitions — about whether it's better to be eaten by a shark or to die from electrocution, for example — go unmentioned in many reports on campaign events, which instead focus on sane-sounding policy announcements, such as eliminating taxes on tips.

These are valid criticisms, but they vastly overplay the ability of mainstream media to shape the national conversation. Newspapers and network news have shrinking audiences, while social media is grabbing ever more eyeballs. About 50 percent of Americans now go to platforms like TikTok, X, and Instagram to get their news — where they also get a flood of disinformation served up by influencers, hucksters, and propagandists. A Russian-created fake video smearing Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz with abuse allegations has been viewed some 5 million times on X. Millions more have seen bogus AI-generated images of Trump wading through the floodwaters in the wake of Hurricane Helene, feeding a Trump-backed narrative that only he — and not the Biden administration — cares about the storm's victims. Clearly, we have a reality problem, but it's one that traditional media is largely powerless to fix.