The Media Really Is Obsessed With Trump
The coverage of Trump is quantitatively an extreme outlier compared to any other president on record.
Trump has an unhealthy fixation with the media. He seems to get most of his information about the world from newspapers and cable news, over and above the experts tasked with advising him. He obsesses over how he is portrayed in mainstream outlets, and regularly takes to social media to whine about the coverage in these outlets.
It turns out that the obsession is mutual: The way the press covers Trump is quantifiably unlike any other president in modern U.S. history.
Using a data visualization tool developed by communications scholar David Rozado (and two of his students, Mohammed Dinnunhan and Raymond Hua), I was able to graph all mentions of the terms Carter, Regan, Bush (includes H.W., W., Jeb et al.), Clinton (includes Bill, Hillary, Clinton Foundation, etc.), Obama and Trump in the New York Times, from 1975 through 2018.
The tool presents users with three important bits of information:
First, there is count: the total number of times the term appears in the corpus during that year. For instance, the count for “Trump” in 2018 is 93,292, meaning this word was evoked more than 93k times in the New York Times over the course of last year.
Next, there is frequency: the result of dividing the count for a word in any given year by the total number of words in that year’s corpus (excluding non-substantive terms such as “and”, “but”, “the”, etc.). The frequency stat allows us to control for the fact that the total number of articles and words published can vary substantially across time. For instance, in 1970 the Times published far fewer articles than they do today (thanks to the internet, they can publish far more than they put to print). For this reason, the graphs below will rely on each word’s frequency rather than the count.
In 2017, Trump’s frequency was roughly .004. That means he was directly mentioned every 250 substantive words or so—or, given the typical length of a Times piece, 2-3 times per article. This is absolutely astonishing given that this data includes every article on any topic published by the Times (including content from the sports, style, food and travel sections) — suggesting that little is published without some reference to Trump, and articles regularly mention him many, many times. The president seems to be a prism through which most other stories are filtered.
Finally, there is rank: how often a given word is used relative to other words in the corpus for that year. For instance, the rank for “Trump” in 2018 is 4, indicating this was the 4th most-used word in the entire corpus for that year (excluding non-substantive terms).
For contrast, Obama, at his peak (2008), was the #9 word in the lexicon, mentioned 62k times. However, his mentions dropped off dramatically thereafter. In 2009, he slid down to #22, mentioned 48k times — and by the following year, he was rank 40, with 34k mentions. That is, looking at both presidents two years after their election, the Times talks about Trump almost 3x as much as they did Obama (our first black president).
Even Ronald Reagan — who revolutionized the Republican Party and has become highly symbolic since –was only ranked 21 at his peak, mentioned 31k times. President Trump once bragged that he is “far greater than Ronald Reagan.” In terms of dominating the national conversation, that certainly seems to be the case:
Indeed, even indirect mentions are way up for Trump as compared to previous commanders-in-chief. For instance, consider the terms “president” (i.e. “the president says…”), “white house” (i.e. “according to the White House…”) and “administration” (i.e. “this administration has…”): The New York Times used “White House” and “president” more in 2017 than any other time since 1974 (the year of Nixon’s resignation, more than 40 years ago). For “administration” you’d have to go back to the Reagan era for a period where the term was more than it has been under Trump.
Given his already unprecedently high starting rates, one shudders to think how much Trump will end up being directly and indirectly mentioned over the course of 2019 — as the president is now facing down impeachment proceedings of his own, and the 2020 election cycle is also getting underway.
Adding up these indirect mentions to the direct mentions, we can see that the obsession with Trump is significantly higher than the first graph suggested – as dire as that initial depiction was. In fact, the total frequency of mentions roughly doubles when we account for both direct and indirect mentions of Trump.
I analyzed coverage in the New York Times in large part because the tool was designed to examine this specific publication – but I would be surprised if these coverage patterns were wildly out of line with those of other publications. This is in part because flagship publications like the Times play a significant role in setting the agenda for other outlets (from the stories they focus on, to the frames they use). In fact, these effects would probably be even stronger in explicitly partisan media outlets (such as The Nation, Salon or Mother Jones on the left, or National Review, American Conservative or Fox News on the right). Similar patterns also hold with respect to cable news, as I demonstrate here.
Television Media Tells the Same Story
A new tool from Stanford University’s Computer Graphics Lab reveals that cable news has undergone a similar transformation. The Stanford Cable TV News Analyzer allows users to, among other things, to track cable news screen time for anyone they’d like, from 2010 to present. Looking at Trump relative to Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden reveals a number of striking patterns:
First, the media gives Donald Trump about twice as much airtime per day as they gave Obama from 2010 to 2016. Comparing Trump to his 2016 and (especially) 2020 rivals is also dramatic: Trump received significantly more airtime than Hillary Clinton virtually every month of the 2016 campaign, and Joe Biden is nowhere close this cycle.
During the 2016 campaign, from August 2015- November 2016, cable news aired about two hours (123 minutes) of Trump per day. And of course, this is just a fraction of the total coverage, as every clip of Trump speaking is typically bookended with (panels of) other people talking about what Trump was going to say or just said – building 10-minute segments out of 2 minutes of Trump talk.
What is most striking in the data, however, is what changed after the election – because almost nothing changed. In 2017, the average was 110 minutes per day; in 2018 it was 114 minutes; in 2019, 112 minutes — and so far in 2020, 110 minutes. That is, there is a mere 10 minutes per day difference (collectively!) between the levels of airtime provided for Trump during his groundbreaking campaign, and the amount of airtime they’ve given to him every day since. If people are exhausted, it’s no surprise: news media has basically been running on 2016 campaign intensity for four years straight now.
This becomes even clearer when we break out Trump airtime by network. The coverage is extremely steady from 2015 through the present; fluctuations notwithstanding, the overall trend in the data is basically flat:
Perhaps more surprising is how the trends in coverage break down. A lot of attention has been paid to the relationship between Fox News and Trump. Although Trump does get a bit more airtime on Fox than CNN, the difference is actually not that great. In fact, the network that consistently gives Trump the most airtime is not Fox News, but MSNBC. The channel’s views may hate Trump, but they keep serving them Trump content. It doesn’t matter that viewers are watching to feed their outrage; all that seems to matter is that people are watching.
Trump professes to hate the media. Meanwhile, journalists and media executives profess to hate Trump. Yet they are also obsessed with one-another. And Americans can’t seem to look away: like print media, cable news outlets have enjoyed record ratings and huge increases in ad revenue by fetishizing the president.
There is wall-to-wall and breathless coverage over every outrageous word and action – often leading outlets to inadvertently report incorrect information in their bid to keep everyone glued to their seats. They fact-check Trump constantly. But of course, they do this only after airing, and then often repeating, misinformation. This can create what psychologists call an ‘illusory truth effect,’ where people end up remembering the falsehood, forgetting the correction – and then attributing their misinformation to the very source that had tried to correct it!
In short, the media, the president, and the public seem to be locked into the world’s worst relationship triangle.
Hindsight and 2020
Using these data we can also gain important insights into the 2016 presidential election. During the last presidential election year, “Clinton” was the #24 ranked word in the New York Times lexicon, mentioned about 34k times. Meanwhile, “Trump” was the #6 word, mentioned nearly 77k times. In other words, the race was clearly “about” Trump; he was mentioned more than twice as much as his competitor. On cable TV, Hillary Clinton had about 4500 minutes of airtime per month at her peak. During the same period, Trump got 7000 minutes — over 50% more.
In fairness to the press, this is also partly the fault of Clinton, who also sought to make the election a referendum on her opponent rather than building it around her own vision and plans. According to a study by the Wesleyan Media Project, Clinton ran one of the least substantial campaigns in modern political history – even less substantial than Trump’s! Her ads were focused almost entirely on disparaging her rival.
And on top of that, Hillary Clinton, who has a well-known disdain for the press, often tried to minimize media access — making sporadic and tightly-regulated engagements with the press. This is in stark contrast with Trump who would talk to anyone, anywhere, anytime about any topic – and practically anything could come out of his mouth in a given interview.
Unfortunately, the 2020 race is likely to be more of the same. The media remains obsessed with Trump. Although there was a slight drop-off in mentions in 2018, he still remains above his 2016 levels of coverage. No other previous president comes close – nor are any of Trump’s erstwhile rivals anywhere near him in terms of mentions.
Indeed, Trump’s comments will be even more newsworthy in 2020 than they were in 2016, because he won’t be speaking merely as the Republican candidate this cycle, but as the sitting President of the United States
For this reason, as things currently stand, any challenger will have a difficult time getting oxygen relative to Trump in any given news cycle (especially a wonky technocrat). Likely most questions that are directed at the Democratic nominee will be queries about their reaction to something Trump said or did. It could be 2016 all over again.
Back to the Basics
To help avoid a repeat of the last election cycle, members of the press should rethink their posture towards Trump. Critically, this does not mean they need to take a more aggressive posture against the president – or in favor of his eventual opponent. In fact, the alignment between the press and Trump’s ‘resistance’ is a problem for the credibility of these outlets:
In terms of endorsements and direct financial support, reporters and media organizations rallied behind Clinton’s candidacy (and against Trump’s) in a manner that was unlike any other contemporary election cycle. They also gave Clinton significantly more favorable coverage as compared to her opponent.
Studies by Pew, the Harvard Kennedy School and the Media Research Center show that, even after the election, press coverage has remains leaps-and-bounds more critical of Trump than for any other president on record at comparable stages in their administrations.
This negative coverage has done little to erode Trump’s support with his base. Instead, it seems to be contributing to greater polarization around the media itself. According to a recent poll by the Columbia Journalism Review, Americans have less confidence in the press today than any other major social institution—including Congress and the White House!
One thing that would probably help turn these negative perceptions around would be to scale back the obsession with Trump. There are so many other things to talk about in this world, which are being underreported.
The humanitarian disaster in Yemen, whose death toll now stands in excess of 100,000. The major protests in Lebanon and Iraq. More than a million Uighur’s being confined in concentration camps. Yet apparently (based on their respective levels of coverage) these stories, and virtually all others, pale in significance to Donald J. Trump.
Surely, we can do better than this.
Indeed, if the members of the press believe the facts are against Trump and his ilk, then they should focus first and foremost on helping people regain trust in the facts and the people reporting them. This should be a far higher priority than the 2020 horse race or the latest White House scandal.
A Question of Priorities
The dilemma many media outlets face, however, is that although their Trump obsession may erode overall levels of trust in the press, they have nonetheless been able to profit handsomely by playing to the ‘resistance.’
Trump’s opposition — eager to consume the latest essays bashing the president, reporting on his various scandals and gaffes, speculating on his prospects, etc. — have invested in the paper at unprecedented levels. There was a record spike in NY Times subscriptions over the course of the 2016 election cycle, due largely (in the Times’ own accounting) to the mutual antagonism between Trump and the paper of record. The publication now boasts a record high number of paid subscribers consuming their Trump-laden content.
They are not alone. Many outlets have seen sharp increases in readership and subscribers by capitalizing on (and reinforcing) the obsession with Trump. Granted, they are increasingly preaching to a choir of committed partisans — limiting their potential to actually sway minds and impact the course of events – but that may matter less to many of these media companies than their bottom lines.
Put another way:
Yes, it would be bad for the integrity and credibility of journalism were the dynamics of the few years to continue through 2020. It would lead to the continued neglect of other important stories. It would contribute to deeper polarization and a continued erosion of America’s civic culture. A repeat of the dynamics from the previous cycle would likely prove lethal to the prospects of the eventual Democratic nominee.
Yet, from the perspective of many media companies, four more years of Trump would likely be great for business. Hence, even if these organizations can be made to see how egregious their current posture is — and recognize some of the problems it creates — there may not be much institutional will to do anything about it. This is perhaps the most terrifying prospect of all.
4/17/2023 update
At time of writing, Trump has been out of office for more than two years. Colleague David Rozado recently checked in on my findings from this essay and found that, although coverage has declined significantly from it’s 2017 peak, coverage of former president Donald Trump remains significantly higher than sitting president Joe Biden. Indeed, coverage of Trump, more than two years out, remains close to the overall peaks for all other presidents in the dataset. The rest of the country may want to move on from Trump. The media, however, is having a tough time letting go:
