The Trump Spectacle Is Overshadowing the More Urgent Scandals of This Administration

The Trump Spectacle Is Overshadowing the More Urgent Scandals of This Administration

The Trump Spectacle Is Overshadowing the More Urgent Scandals of This Administration

To truly hold the president accountable, there has to be more distinction between news that affects people’s lives and the daily outrages that often distract from the issues.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

Breaking news: President Trump tweeted. He’s feuding with a foreign leader—or a football team. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is investigating the administration.

In today’s media environment, these “breaking” political news alerts are nearly constant. They dominate cable news and serve primarily to agitate rather than inform. Though the tendency to focus on spectacle over substance is not a new media phenomenon, it has noticeably worsened under the influence of a president who has devoted his public life to making a spectacle of himself. And as recent events have shown, it is leaving little to no oxygen for important issues that have real consequences on the American people’s lives.

Perhaps the most brazen example is the media’s neglect of hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico. Last month, a new Harvard study estimated that 4,645 deaths can be linked to the storm and its immediate aftermath, a toll far higher than the official estimate of 64. If accurate, that’s more than the number of Americans killed on 9/11 or during the Iraq War. Yet on the day it was released, the study was treated as an afterthought on cable news, which instead dedicated hours to the controversy over Trump-supporting actress Roseanne Barr’s racist tweets. Worse, as James Downie wrote in The Washington Post, “On the major Sunday talk shows—the purest distillation of what the media and political establishments consider worth discussing—not once was Puerto Rico mentioned. That is a disgrace.”

Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

We cannot back down

We now confront a second Trump presidency.

There’s not a moment to lose. We must harness our fears, our grief, and yes, our anger, to resist the dangerous policies Donald Trump will unleash on our country. We rededicate ourselves to our role as journalists and writers of principle and conscience.

Today, we also steel ourselves for the fight ahead. It will demand a fearless spirit, an informed mind, wise analysis, and humane resistance. We face the enactment of Project 2025, a far-right supreme court, political authoritarianism, increasing inequality and record homelessness, a looming climate crisis, and conflicts abroad. The Nation will expose and propose, nurture investigative reporting, and stand together as a community to keep hope and possibility alive. The Nation’s work will continue—as it has in good and not-so-good times—to develop alternative ideas and visions, to deepen our mission of truth-telling and deep reporting, and to further solidarity in a nation divided.

Armed with a remarkable 160 years of bold, independent journalism, our mandate today remains the same as when abolitionists first founded The Nation—to uphold the principles of democracy and freedom, serve as a beacon through the darkest days of resistance, and to envision and struggle for a brighter future.

The day is dark, the forces arrayed are tenacious, but as the late Nation editorial board member Toni Morrison wrote “No! This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”

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Onwards,

Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editorial Director and Publisher, The Nation

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