The first thing you learn in media training is that ‘Man bites dog’ is news but ‘Dog bites man’ is not. The idea being that if you hope to get your story or press release picked up by the media it needs to offer something different. It has to be new or exciting or in news parlance have a ‘compelling narrative’. And while this is understandable as far as it goes, it is not without risk. The risk of distortion, the risk of not covering topics in any depth, the risk of promoting topics or people because they attract readers for their shock value, rather than any inherent newsworthiness.
A clear example of this is the US elections. We saw it first in 2016 when Donald Trump was competing with Hillary Clinton for President. Clinton was a known quantity – she was also boring. She had the right credentials, the right experience, and would make a perfectly adequate President. Trump on the other hand was outrageous. He said things that enthralled some and appalled many, but it all kept him in the media spotlight.
And the equation for media was simple – boost circulation by promoting him at every chance but on the understanding that it wouldn’t change the expected outcome – Trump was patently unqualified to be President and deep-down people knew that.
Except that’s not how it worked out. While it’s difficult to impute motives to voters, the fact that ‘Trump’ was everywhere in the media surely played a part in his unexpected win.
By the time the 2020 election came around, the Trump chaos had worn a little thin and enough people wanted predictability and old-fashioned governance to choose Joe Biden. The media attention was more fairly distributed and there were discussions on policies and problems.
Now, in 2024 the boot so far is on the other foot. In the excitement of having a younger candidate to promote, someone who has a ‘compelling narrative’ as possibly the first multi-racial, female President, all the media attention is on Kamala Harris. She is riding high on the contrast of a younger woman talking joy and ‘going forward’ while an old man rants about ‘American carnage’. The ‘vibe’ is all with Harris while Trump apparently is desperate to turn the media spotlight back on himself.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy with Harris’ candidacy, but the media is playing the same game as it did in 2016.