“People can’t allow them to get away with their disinformation campaign.”
Former president Donald Trump made this remark a few days ago during an interview with billionaire Elon Musk, on Musk’s social media platform X.
The Republican nominee was attacking his opponent, vice president and presumptive Democratic Party nominee Kamala Harris, over her record on immigration policy, blaming her for millions of people flowing into the U.S. illegally.
In essence, Trump’s “disinformation campaign” comment referred to his claim that Harris is trying to appear tougher on immigration and that she is downplaying her responsibility for illegal migrants, as the U.S. election nears.
Voters are telling pollsters that illegal immigration is among their top priorities. Harris will be fact-checked on this issue by reporters covering her campaign and it’s a file pundits say she could be vulnerable on, leading up to the Nov. 5 vote.
The Harris campaign has previously shot back at Trump’s criticisms of her on this issue, saying Trump effectively used his influence over Republican congressmen — after he was no longer in office — to block a bipartisan agreement that would have helped solve the border crisis.
And back and forth it goes.
But the message about not letting anyone get away with disinformation is one everyone must heed — journalists everywhere, and of course readers — as the U.S. election heats up.
For journalists and media outlets, including the Star, coverage of the election presents many challenges. Overcoming the constant drum beat messaging of “fake news” and “disinformation” is one of them.
With a dismissive wave of his hand, Trump has managed to masterfully weaponize the term “fake news” in his bid to broadly discredit journalists — reporters, columnists and media outlets — who publish stories that he doesn’t like, that cast him in a negative light or that point out his lies and failures.
But readers everywhere should be careful. Instantly disparaging a news report or media outlet as “fake news” can, for one thing, provide a lazy cop-out, an excuse for a reader to not take the time to sit down, read and carefully examine and dissect an article.
(And I’m referring to content from reputable news organizations, including the Star, which adhere to codes of journalistic conduct — not to outlets that have no standards and deliberately peddle lies).
But Trump’s values and perspectives and those of his MAGA culture have taken hold in an astounding way in the U.S. and abroad and this has huge implications for those of us in the media whose job it is to get accurate stories out.
Just think, for example, of all the countless news reports and features, the court cases and resources that emanated from Trump’s false and thoroughly debunked claims about results from the last U.S. election being rigged. When it was formerly known as Twitter and under prior ownership, the social media platform banned Trump for spreading disinformation that resulted in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Congress building.
The confidence in the U.S. voting system was rattled badly, their democracy too, all because of his false claims.
Will it happen again if he loses this time? Buckle up folks.
To this day it’s sometimes hard to believe that one man, Trump, was responsible for all this ground-shaking turmoil. An ex-president, twice impeached and now a convicted felon.
Yet here we go with another Trump election campaign that will again test journalists covering it.
One article that caught my eye recently was a marvellous investigative piece Rolling Stone carried that took a deep look at the 2025 Project and how Trump has tried to distance himself from the conservative document. The document is intended to serve as a social policy and government policy blueprint, a road map, for Trump’s administration should he win the next election.
The voluminous 2025 report was prepared by a stable of experts including former top officials from Trump’s term in office — and written in close consultation with Trump, Rolling Stone reported. Trump is distancing himself from the document and feels it will hurt him in terms of votes, in large part due to the document’s call for stringent reforms to U.S. abortion policies, the magazine pointed out.
(For me, one part of the 2025 document drips with irony. The section on pornography calls for the industry to be “outlawed” and those who produce and distribute this material to be jailed. An interesting pronouncement given Trump’s scandal involving porn actress Stormy Daniels and the fact he was convicted this year of falsifying business records in a bid to gain her silence about a sexual liaison between them. But I digress).
Extra steps sometime must be taken to prove authenticity when reporting on Trump. Walter Masterson, an activist and comedian in the U.S. took this to the nth degree in a video on X that I found instructive, quite frankly, for journalists.
The video, taken from a Trump rally in New Jersey in May, depicts hundreds of people walking out while the former president is speaking. Masterson posted 35 unedited minutes of the video on X. It’s really quite astonishing to watch.
In an article in Newsweek about the video, Masterson is quoted as saying: “You can clearly see that people are leaving while [Trump is] rambling incoherently.” He later added, “This happens at a lot of rallies, cultists show up thinking (Trump) will say something new and profound. Then they get bored and walkout.”
But for me, the lesson for journalists is how on the video Masterson asks different departing attendees what the time is. It’s a brilliant technique — the attendees serve as human time stamps. It means conspiracy critics can’t accuse Masterson of looping the video for effect.
It’s all fair game in the brave new world of journalism that has sprung from Donald Trump’s time in power.
