After Robert Mueller’s report, the partisan US press must reflect on how it played into China’s hands

Determined to smear the US president while attracting more readers, the US press, including respected newspapers, sold a story of collusion with Russia that rested on questionable foundations. In the process, democracy began to look less credible

Robert Boxwell

Published: 1:30am, 30 Mar 2019

Why you can trust SCMP

One could almost hear the shot glasses clinking in celebration in Beijing last weekend, the chortling, the slapping of high-fives, or whatever it is China’s leaders do when they chalk up a victory. It’s hard to imagine a better outcome for them than the conclusion of the long-awaited report from US Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Russia’s role in the 2016 presidential election.

If you thought an indictment of US President Donald Trump, to the backdrop of the US-China trade war, would have been Beijing’s preferred outcome, then you don’t know the Communist Party’s Politburo Standing Committee. Trade wars and presidents come and go, and today’s troubles are but the blink of an eye in Beijing’s view of the world.

No, the Mueller report handed China’s leaders a much better indictment, one of the US press and, by extension, American democracy. For Beijing, working hard to export its “alternative” system of governance around the globe, the past two years of “let’s overthrow Vladimir Putin’s American president” in the US had a happy ending: Putin’s president is still standing, and the press’ reputation isn’t.

The US press used to watch over American democracy rather well, decades ago, when CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite was “the most trusted man in America” and The New York Times and The Washington Post ran crooked Richard Nixon out of office. But those days began to end with the bare-knuckle partisanship that the Clintons ushered in during the 1990s.

And when Google and Facebook started drawing away the press’ advertising dollars, the industry’s financial decline began. Since 2000, thousands of US newspapers and magazines have closed and the Times and the Post, the two most influential of the ones that remained, had to choose between cash and credibility. They chose cash.

After spending a great deal of time and money trying to figure out how such trusted brands as BuzzFeed and Facebook (yes, I’m kidding) attracted clicks, they began “dumbing down” their product as part of a strategy to build “communities”, to use terms from former Times executive editor Jill Abramson’s recent book, Merchants of Truth .

Then, in mid-2015, one of the largest, most rabid communities in history, educated and affluent, began coalescing around Trump’s candidacy – Trump haters. Granted, he’s a fairly hateable guy. But when “headlines contain[ing] raw opinion” began appearing, “as did … stories that were labelled as news analysis”, as Abramson wrote, it was good for business, but it accelerated the destruction of something money can’t buy: the trust that made the business in the first place.

Few things make humans happier than someone they hate getting pommelled. Negative reports on Trump were good for clicks and shares.

One of the first signs that the press group-hate might take them off the rails was when Trump said at a press conference in July 2016, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 [Hillary Clinton] emails that are missing.” It was a pretty good line, spoken at a campaign press conference. But to Trump haters, it was evidence of “treason”. Look at the comments on the Times’ and Post’s stories: 7,687 and 6,487, respectively. Happy communities clicking away.

US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin shake hands at the beginning of a meeting in Helsinki, Finland, on July 16, 2018. Photo: AP

Trump attacked the press throughout his campaign, popularising the term “fake news” along the way. The press fought back, hating him so much that they missed the mood of much of the country. That he won the election only seemed to make them double down on the bashing.

Then, on the eve of Trump’s inauguration, a “dossier”, a salacious tale of unsubstantiated Trump ties to Russia, prostitutes and lots of other bad things presidents shouldn’t be doing, was published by BuzzFeed, whose offices would have been shuttered 20 minutes later if the setting had been, say, Singapore. But, in the US, the rest of the press picked it up and ran with it.

A few weeks after Trump’s inauguration, the Post added a slogan to its masthead, “democracy dies in darkness”, long on alliteration and longer on hyperventilation. Among its fans was People’s Daily, which tweeted “Washington Post puts on new slogan, on the same day Trump calls media as the enemy of Americans.” Don’t mind the grammar. The Post, 140-years sloganless, reacting to mockery, assured all that they had been thinking about the slogan “long before Trump was the Republican presidential nominee”. Sure. I’ve been thinking about my 500-foot yacht for decades.

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Then, during the Academy Awards later that month, the Times began an advertising campaign – still running – that invokes “the truth”, as if you have to read the Times to get it. It brings to mind an old bankers’ saying about creditworthiness: if you have to claim it, you’ve already lost it.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders calls on a reporter during the daily press briefing at the White House in Washington on January 29, 2018. Trump and his team have had a fractious relationship with some quarters of the news media. Photo: AP

For two years, the Trump-hating press told the world that Trump or his family, or his campaign – somebody! – colluded with “the Russians” to win the 2016 election. Now Mueller says it didn’t happen. The story looks like this decade’s weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Someone with an agenda started the collusion bus and the press jumped in and went along for the ride.

Part two of this saga is now in progress, investigating the investigation – who knew what, when and so forth. All of which means more press hyperventilation and more distraction in Washington.

Which is all good news for Beijing. Trump will be gone soon enough, but a rabidly partisan US press will still be around. People around the globe where democracy is trying to take root, or has taken root and is trying to survive, can’t help but see the mess in the US and ask if that system is really the best way to run a country. China’s leaders have a view on that, and the US press just spent two years helping it sound reasonable.

Robert Boxwell is director of the consultancy Opera Advisors

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