For months, foolish people like myself suggested there was something problematic about the fact that Donald Trump had not held a press conference since July. How could he be held accountable without subjecting himself to interrogation by the press corps? Don't we need to at least see him confront some tough questions, in a situation where he can be called out when he lies and be forced to answer questions he'd rather avoid?
But Trump has a unique ability to make you question your assumptions. And after watching his first post-election press conference, one has to wonder whether there's much point in demanding that he do any more. In fact, it only highlighted the urgency for the nation's press corps to understand that covering this unusual president requires them to figure out a new way to do their jobs.
That press conference was no less of a dumpster fire than Trump's entire presidential campaign. It was full of absurd claims-no, there are not "96 million really wanting a job and they can't get"-and full of Trump's usual petty vindictiveness, as he lashed out at the intelligence community, the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party, and of course the media. (About the only person who didn't come up for criticism was, naturally, Vladimir Putin.) He lobbed insults at news organizations (CNN is "fake news," Buzzfeed is "a failing pile of garbage"), had his staff whoop and cheer his answers, and brought out a pile of blank file folders apparently holding reams of blank paper, which he claimed were the papers he had to sign to disassociate from his business, which he's not actually disassociating himself from. At the end of it, one had to say: What was the point of that?
As we've seen again and again, Trump is willing to violate the norms that for years or decades have determined how government and politics operate. But that applies to the press, too-and reporters have to adapt. For instance, one of the assumptions underlying presidential press conferences is that the president feels at least some obligation to tell the truth, and some shame about being caught in a lie. If reporters do catch him lying, they'll press him on it, he'll squirm, and not only will the truth be revealed, but he'll be more likely to remain honest in the future so as to avoid a repeat of the experience.
But that doesn't apply to Trump. He lies so often and so obviously-sometimes for barely any discernible purpose-that calling him out on a lie to his face has no effect. He'll either repeat his lie or just move on to another one. In the context of a press conference, that gives him an advantage, at least insofar as his lie gets broadcast. Every Trump press conference is likely to turn into some version of this last one, where Trump acts in such a Trumpian way that no accountability is possible.
So what can the press do? They have to start questioning their own norms, and whether the way they've done business is tenable under this administration. That means casting off a few assumptions, including the following:
Direct questioning is the way to hold the president accountable. It's not that reporters should stop asking for interviews or boycott his press conferences, should he continue to have them. There have been interviews that have yielded important information and insights, sometimes for no other reason than they illustrate how pig-ignorant or hypocritical Trump is about some important topic. But they should keep their expectations low, and focus. Some collusion wouldn't hurt either, as hard as it is to achieve in an intensely competitive business. For instance, they might decide together that they'll all ask about a single topic, in the hope that they might struggle their way through the hurricane of baloney Trump inevitably throws up. But neither the press conference nor the interview should be treated as the most important tool in the reporters' belt.
Access is critical. This has been a questionable assumption for a long time, but it's particularly important to discard it now. Yes, it makes reporters' jobs easier if they can get something like an inside scoop from sources as close as possible to the president. But those sources have always been more interested in using those contacts to push out the White House's spin, and with the most dishonest president in history, that spin is inevitably going to be even more misleading. In the campaign, the most valuable contributions were made by reporters like David Fahrenthold and Daniel Dale, who carved out an important niche and pursued it without relying on official sources. It can be a difficult thing to do if you're facing daily deadlines, but the chance that the most critical journalism in the Trump years will come from the person with the sources closest to Trump is approximately zero.
Critiquing the spectacle is important. The tendency to act like theater critics has long been a problem for political reporters, but it becomes even more problematic when they're covering a president who's primarily a celebrity entertainer. The point isn't that they shouldn't get underneath the show the White House is putting on, but that they need to do it in the right way. When Trump puts on photo ops trumpeting his heroic saving of a few hundred jobs, for instance, the question isn't what the visuals were like or whether it will "resonate" with some allegedly key voting bloc, it's how this one case fits in with the larger economic picture, and what kinds of results his policies are likely to produce.
Everything the president says-or tweets-is news. That's true to a degree, but we have to start with the assumption that what Trump says is highly likely to be false, or at the very least a childish distraction from more important things happening at the same time. That doesn't mean it shouldn't be discussed, but it should be discussed with the proper context. When Trump says that Representative John Lewis's Atlanta district is "in horrible shape and falling apart (not to mention crime infested)," the proper response is not "Ooh, snap! Trump's in another feud!" It's to point out that Lewis' district is in fact doing pretty well (it's the home of the CDC, a bunch of colleges and universities including Georgia Tech, Emory, and Morehouse, and lots of thriving neighborhoods), and ask why the president-elect assumes that an African American congressman must represent a district out of some 1970s Charles Bronson urban-decay revenge thriller. In other words: If you must report the tweet, do it in a way that might actually teach your audience something important.
Unfortunately, following all these suggestions would make the already challenging job journalists have even harder. But as they should understand by now, the old ways of doing things just aren't going to work with this president-unless they want him to run roughshod over them and get away with anything.
