Election Countdown, 182 Days to Go: One Publication Shows the Way....
... while another tries to find its way. Reports from Time and the NYT.
Time magazine’s online presentation of last week’s cover story, based on extensive interviews with Donald Trump. The story made news around the world, and it demonstrated one way journalism can cope with Donald Trump.
This post is about two splashy developments in the mainstream media world, one of them from last week and the other in the past two days. I want to highlight what I consider an under-appreciated aspect of the first, and to join the ongoing debate about the second.
1) Speak softly, and carry a big research notebook: Time’s secret weapon.
Let’s start with last week’s Time cover package about Donald Trump. It included the dramatic cover photo, lengthy transcripts of two interviews, Time’s own fact-checking of Trump’s claims, and an overview article by the correspondent who asked the questions. That was Time’s Eric Cortellessa, whom I happen to know and like.
As soon as the story appeared, its revelations made news around the world. In a speech last week Joe Biden talked about it for four full paragraphs and called it “mandatory reading.” Despite the millions of words and thousands of riffs everyone has already heard from him, these words of Trump’s somehow broke through.
One question about the interview is why Trump would have agreed to it. Why subject himself to a rare, extended sit-down session with a news organization outside his captive orbit, and a reporter presumably looking for more than riffs and lies?
I think the answer must have been generational. During Trump’s formative Boomer years, being on a Time cover was an ultimate mark of having arrived. Since his first such appearance, in the “Art of the Deal” era of the late 1980s, Trump has been on the cover dozens of times. He even manufactured a fake Time cover story about himself to frame and display at his country clubs. For Trump, another chance for a real Time cover must have seemed validating in a way that just another heartland rally could not match—and in a way that younger aspirants like a JD Vance or an Elise Stefanik could not fully internalize.1
But why did a young reporter from Time get so much more out of Trump than countless others have? I think a lot of it had to do with Eric Cortellessa’s skillful demonstration of the difference between being unpleasant, and being tough.
Through the TV era and especially since the mid-1990s, when daily White House press briefings first began to be televised, reporters could make names for themselves by turning queries into performances. Yelling out questions, acting skeptical or disapproving about answers, interrupting, looking for the “gotcha”—we all know how this looks, at briefings and on cable talk shows. The more aggressive you seemed, the likelier you were to show up in a viral clip, and the “tougher” you were assumed to be.
That approach has its place. But Cortellessa shows the usually neglected power of the opposite strategy. That is: a polite and respectful manner, overlaid on steel-trap preparation and attention. Cortellessa directs questions to Trump as if he were addressing a normal politician, and listens as if he might get real answers. He keeps giving Trump more rope, which Trump keeps tying himself up in.
Cortellessa also keeps asking about policies, rather than politics. Most talk shows and cable panels are built on incessant “how will this play?” speculation. How will suburban white women in Pennsylvania think about this new announcement? What about Latino men in Texas?
The over-emphasis on How will this play? is the scourge of modern political coverage. It’s mainly guesswork, it mostly turns out to be wrong, and the pundit is almost never called back to explain why the real-world outcome differs from the guesses. How will this work? is the more informative but rarer question. It’s what this Time interview is built around, and why it made so much news.
Here’s an example from the transcript, about immigration. It’s not about the politics of the border but rather the specifics of what Trump would do. I’m boiling down the answers to highlight the politely relentless focus of the questions.
Time: You have said you're gonna do this massive deportation operation. I want to know specifically how you plan to do that.
[Trump goes off into a familiar, false riff about Dwight Eisenhower overseeing mass deportations. Cortellessa moves immediately back to the topic:]
What’s your plan, sir?
Trump: We will be using local law enforcement… [Etc]
Does that include using the U.S. military?
Trump: It would. [Meandering into another riff about Nancy Pelosi calling out the National Guard.]
You would use the military inland as well as at the border?
Trump: I don't think I'd have to do that. I think the National Guard would be able to do that. If they weren't able to, then I’d use the military….
Sir, the Posse Comitatus Act says that you can't deploy the U.S. military against civilians. Would you override that?
Trump: Well, these aren’t civilians. [Trump using the rope he has been handed.] These are people that aren't legally in our country. This is an invasion of our country. An invasion like probably no country has ever seen before. [And on to a rally-speech riff. Cortellessa listens then brings him back to the topic:]
So you can see yourself using the military to address this?
Trump: I can see myself using the National Guard and, if necessary, I'd have to go a step further. [Another rally-riff, including the claim that large numbers of “fighting age” Chinese males are sneaking across the border.]
Would that include building new migrant detention camps?
Trump: We wouldn't have to do very much of that. [Because he would be shipping people out.]…
So are you ruling out that you would build new migrant detention camps?
Trump: No, I would not rule out anything. But there wouldn't be that much of a need for them…
I ask because your close aide and adviser Stephen Miller said that part of what it would take to carry out this deportation operation would include new migrant detention camps.
Trump: It’s possible that we’ll do it to an extent but we shouldn't have to do very much of it…
How are you going to get state and local police departments to participate in this? Under what authority is the President able to do that?
Trump: Well, there's a possibility that some won't want to participate, and they won't partake in the riches, you know…
Does that mean you would create funding incentives from the federal government for state and local police departments?
Faultlessly polite. Thoroughly prepared. Tremendously effective. This is an example to study.
2) What we talk about, when we talk about the NYT.
Two nights ago, Ben Smith of Semafor released an interview with Joe Kahn, who since 2022 has been at the helm as Executive Editor of the NYT. Ever since the Times abolished its Public Editor role seven years ago, its editorial leadership has typically waved off, rather than seriously engaged, outside criticism or questions of its judgments, especially of its coverage of US politics. (Of which I am a frequent critic.) So any Q-and-A of this sort is an oracular event, and media-land has been abuzz with interpretations of Kahn’s comments. If you care about the media, you should read the interview.2
For now I want to make two points about what Kahn says. The first is how startling—frankly, how depressing—it is to see the way the paper’s leader characterizes criticism of its coverage.