Media grapples with how to cover Trump after White House

Two weeks into Donald Trump's post-presidency, it feels like he hasn't really gone away.

He's stayed in the news, defying the tradition of former presidents abruptly falling off the radar upon their successor's inauguration and despite the shutdown of his favored means of communication on Twitter.

Former President Donald Trump speaks during a rally in support of Republican incumbent senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue ahead of Senate runoff in Dalton, Georgia, January 4, 2021. [File Photo: AFP]

That makes sense, given that no other former president has faced an impeachment trial. There are still fresh stories to be told about the riot by his supporters at the U.S. Capitol and questions remaining about how tightly he can maintain control of the Republican Party.

A debate in media circles over how much attention he should receive when he is out of power has been put on hold, probably for several more weeks.

“It's virtually impossible to stop talking about Trump,” said Kelly McBride, National Public Radio public editor. “There's still too many questions about what he did as president.”

Some had seemed ready, even eager, to turn the page.

On Nov. 8, the day after most news organizations declared Joe Biden had won the election, Psychology Today posted a plea on its website: “People in the Media: Please Stop Talking About Donald Trump.”

The day after he left office, McBride wrote a column headlined, “With a new president sworn in, should journalists now ignore Trump?” She concluded no, but offered specific recommendations for news organizations to avoid going overboard.

She's since been surprised at the continued volume of Trump stories.

On Monday, The New York Times led the paper with a riveting, nearly 10,000-word account of how Trump pressed the false claim that he had won the election, leading up to his Jan. 6 rally shortly before supporters stormed the Capitol. Trump's impeachment trial begins next week.

Headlines in the opinion section on The Washington Post's website mentioned “Trump” or Trumpism" 14 times over the weekend, compared with 11 for Biden. The top news story online for The Post on Monday was about the turnover in Trump's legal team for his impeachment trial.

Stories about Trump on websites monitored by the analytics and advertising company Taboola in January got nearly four times as much traffic as stories about Biden. Trump stories had at least double the amount of traffic almost every day of the month. That continued even after the inauguration, but at a lesser degree. The social media analytics company NewsWhip said stories about Biden have been interacted with 250 million times since Jan. 20, compared with 192 million for Trump.

Certainly, television networks that have enjoyed unprecedented ratings over the past five years don't mind a delay in their expected day of reckoning, when executives worry about what will happen without Trump to talk about.

“He's the one who gets everyone's pulse rates racing and keeps people glued to the television,” said Mark Whitaker, former Newsweek editor and executive at CNN and NBC News.

NPR's McBride can't recall one story since Trump has left office that she would consider superfluous. Many are investigative, revealing important details about his administration and how he tried to overturn the election.

The Washington Post's media columnist, Margaret Sullivan, in December offered her own advice to news organizations to detach themselves from a man who dominated their pages and airtime. “Don't allow him to become a self-styled president in exile, the golf-cart version of Napoleon on Elba,” she wrote.

“I was not anticipating an insurrection and impeachment,” Sullivan said.

She believes her central premise — don't cover him unnecessarily — still holds.