Annica Dupre

The media’s addiction to reporting on former President Donald Trump is harming our democracy.

ABC News anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis, who moderated the September 10 presidential debate, have been accused of biased fact-checking.

Muir and Davis corrected former President Donald Trump five times, while they didn’t check Vice President Kamala Harris once. It’s not to say Harris didn’t embellish the truth. For example, her claim that Trump “left” the Biden administration with the highest unemployment rates since the Great Depression was inaccurate. During Trump’s presidency, the unemployment rate hit 14.8%, which is indeed the highest since the Depression—but it dropped by the time Joe Biden took office.

This is the kind of rhetoric we expect from a politician during a debate: the subtle manipulation of language with the goal of winning you over. That is vastly different from spewing xenophobic lies concocted by your running mate.

Trump’s infamous tale about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio never actually happened. In an interview on CNN, vice presidential candidate Senator JD Vance admitted, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.” His lie resulted in bomb threats across the city. Schools needed to be evacuated. Haitian people were and are still being harassed.

When Muir fact-checked Trump about this anecdote, he wasn’t being biased. He was doing the bare minimum.

Over the past nine exhausting years, Donald Trump has transformed our political culture, primarily through his constant stream of racist, xenophobic, sexist, extremist, hate-filled, hyperbolic lies. Meanwhile, the biggest news stations stand before him with their cameras and microphones, sitting in silence as they project this man’s rally rambles to the entire nation. Some may argue Trump’s exercising his freedom of speech, but just because someone has the right to say something doesn’t mean their words have the right to be broadcast on national television.

It’s cynical to believe the media roots for a Trump victory, but is it so far off? Reporting on him requires minimal effort and causes mass outrage, which garners clicks, eyeballs, and heaping tons of money. Meanwhile, his voice takes up the space of others’ that need to be heard.

Politics weren’t at the front of the average American’s mind a decade ago. Now we’ve become addicted, and the cable news media couldn’t survive if we weren’t.

Can they quit their own addiction? Take what happened on August 8. Trump gave a news conference from his home at Mar-a-Lago (in which he spoke 162 lies in 64 minutes) while Harris gave a speech in Michigan. All of the cable news networks broadcast Trump’s press conference live.

“None of the networks carried Kamala Harris’ speech live after the Trump appearance,” MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell rebuked on his newscast later that day. “All of the networks knew [Harris’ speech] was coming. They knew what time it was coming. They knew how to cover it live and they didn’t, after giving Donald Trump more than an hour of live coverage on all of their networks.”

He added, “No network even attempted to fact-check every lie Donald Trump told,” admitting it was impossible to, in the moment, refute each one.

Let’s break that down. What if, on the next episode of World News Tonight, an entire Trump rally played on the right side of the screen while David Muir sat on the left, fact-checking each sentence in real time. He’s fighting the lies, yes, but the act of broadcasting the rally in the first place gives Trump a platform.

Plus, would Muir’s labors make an impact? The highlights of a Trump rally have already been spread far and wide by the time he sits down for his 6:30 cast. The reactions are everywhere. The indoctrination has taken effect. And really, who’s watching World News Tonight other than your grandmother? It’s Brandolini’s principle in practice: The amount of energy needed to refute disinformation is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.

Yet, doesn’t Trump deserve the coverage? He’s the Republican nominee for president, after all. The news media should give attention to both of the major candidates, right?

Not necessarily.

There’s a concept in journalism called bothsidesism, in which two viewpoints are presented fairly and equally when this is not actually the case. The candidate who’s stated his intent to become an authoritarian dictator who will destroy our institutions, federal government, and constitutional freedoms cannot be treated as a standard American presidential candidate. It would be better for our democracy to not cover him.

So: if Donald Trump’s lies are impossible to comprehensively refute and pose a danger to our country, the media has no reason to continue amplifying them.

Of course, eliminating Trump’s voice from the news cycle is idealistic. As O’Donnell said, “You cannot expect [the American news media] in the next 89 days to figure out what they haven’t been able to figure out in nine years.”

Besides, once the man is gone, his ideas won’t be.

Donald Trump has normalized hate and extremism in our country. He poisoned each level of our political system, showing city councilmen, mayors, governors, and senators that it’s not only acceptable to attack American citizens and this country’s values, it’s a winning strategy.

Some no-name Project 2025-loving politician will make a play once Trump’s had his mic cut. Will the media give that candidate a platform too? Or will they keep on making the same mistakes they’ve made since 2016?