“Stop having a nervous breakdown about Trump” Michael Wolff tells the media
Author, columnist and hard-bitten New York reporter Michael Wolff will speak at the GEN summit in Vienna in June. As a preview, here’s a short Q&A with him and Peter Bale, President of the Global Editors Network, exploring Wolff’s perspective on how the news industry is reacting to the Trump era.
Michael Wolff is a born reporter, driven to dig deep and to find out what makes his subjects tick and to disclose it. He loves gossip and unlike many modern reporters publishes what he hears, often with relish and a studied distance from his subjects, many times irritating the rich and famous.
He stands apart from the media circus, often bringing him into conflict with more staid (he would say self-righteous) members of the U.S. media establishment. Nowhere has this studied independence been more apparent than in his criticism of the U.S. media’s frenzy on the candidacy and ultimately the presidency of Donald Trump.
Wolff has conspicuously given Trump the time of day, recognised the remarkable story that was the campaign and the weird and compelling nature of the Trump presidency so far. Far from the expressions of disdain and horror among his colleagues and rivals, Wolff has reported on Trump with fairness and fascination in equal measure. No punches are pulled on the craziness but there is an even-handedness and perspective missing from some of the shrill editorialising in the rest of the U.S. media. (Many will argue Trump doesn’t deserve fairness but that is another story.)
Wolff argues that the U.S. media, in particular the New York Times, the New Yorker and the Washington Post are, in effect, playing to the tune of Trump and his rat-catcher-in-chief Steve Bannon, in questioning the president’s suitability and the decision of millions of U.S. voters.
He answered my questions in writing so each of his responses stands alone and unquestioned further at this point. That’ll come when he’s on stage in Vienna. As someone who has fearlessly bitten the hand of Rupert Murdoch and others I guarantee it will be entertaining but also informed: not fake news but calling out the fakes of the news business.
His most recent book is “Television is the New Television: The Unexpected Triumph of Old Media in the Digital Age” — reviewed here. Right now he is working on a book about…Donald Trump.
Peter Bale: Michael, you’ve been highly critical of US reporters for putting themselves into a constant debate with Trump and his people — fact-checking him in real-time — isn’t that what they are there to do?
Michael Wolff: I have no problem with fact checking. But if you check facts and miss the story that’s certainly counter-productive. If the story is that he’s a hypester and a liar then that’s okay. But if the story is that he’s transforming or anyway jumping up and down on most operative political assumptions then I think “fact checking” quite misses the forest for the trees. Also, I don’t think it’s good for anybody in this business to make their mission to correct. It’s school marmish and unattractive and just cedes the floor to the larger and more passionate voice.
A writer on the Atlantic used the line during the election campaign that journalists took Trump literally but not seriously while his supporters took him seriously but not literally. Is that the essence of the media reaction to Trump, that they just can’t take him seriously?
I think this is already a cliche — so hard to tell what it means. In fact, I think the press often takes him seriously when he is not very serious. There seems to be too many realities that frequently collide but don’t much intersect. Somebody got elected president — democratically elected — who violates all the norms. He doesn’t talk like a President, he doesn’t look like a President, he doesn’t act like a President, and, so, in the press equation, he shouldn’t be President. And the press can’t find a narrative to understand how he could become President.
You seem to take what some may think of as an old-fashioned reporting approach to Trump where you regard him as a great story without yourself judging him as a fit or unfit person for office?
I should hope so. I have trouble quite thinking why or how the great mass of daily journalists would think it’s their job, or in their expertise, to make that judgement, especially in the earliest days of an administration
You know the people around Trump and you have reported on him as a New York fixture for many years. Are we watching a conspiracy unfold in a deliberate and planned way here or just plain chaos?
It certainly seems like much of the media has decided that it will have failed in its calling if it does not defenestrate him as soon as possible. I don’t know whether that represents a new sort of conspiracy or a new sort of religion.
Donald J. Trump on Twitter
Anybody (especially Fake News media) who thinks that Repeal & Replace of ObamaCare is dead does not know the love and strength in R Party!
How should the media react or handle a president who has grasped an unprecedented ability to go around, to dis-intermediate the media, by going direct to the public over social media? It seems to go so much further than a fireside chat or a broadcast.
I think that’s probably an incorrect or shortsighted view. This is obviously a president who cares passionately about the media. The media is his foil and his stage. Never before has a Presidency been run with such attention to the media. Even Trump’s social media attacks and faints are most of all directed at the media. So the real question is how does the media handle a President who is of the media, as good at or better than the media at making media, and who has used the media to turn himself into the world’s most famous person? Whether consciously or not he is the first meta President.
Come to Vienna to hear Michael and I go a little more aggressively into these areas. Who can tell where we’ll stand with Trump by then.
Jay Rosen—New York University
“I don’t think there are many parallels to what we’re seeing now. There’s so much about this situation that is completely strange and busts up democratic norms and exists far outside the normal swing of press relations.” (Poynter, 10 March 2017)
Margaret Sullivan—The Washington Post
“The role of the press ought to be looking hard at what Trump and his administration are doing, and to hold him accountable and be very clear about what’s going on.” (Recode, 15 December 2016)
Jennifer Rubin—The Washington Post
“Donald Trump may never face the media in a standard news conference. He may not even sit for interviews with legitimate journalists, preferring the sycophancy of “Fox & Friends” and the Fox non-News evening lineup. Trump still resorts to juvenile prevarication. So how does the media deal with a president who won’t deal with them?” (The Washington Post, 2 January 2017)
“Stop having a nervous breakdown about Trump” Michael Wolff tells the media was originally published in Global Editors Network on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.