How to Report on Trump: Tell the Truth

Reporting on Trump has been giving the media fits since he first started his presidential run in 2015. The editor for The Cleveland Plain Dealer writes about what should be obvious.

The north star here is truth. We tell the truth, even when it offends some of the people who pay us for information.

This is what journalism is supposed to be. The truth regardless of what it is.

This is not subjective. We all saw it. Plenty of leaders today try to convince the masses we did not see what we saw, but our eyes don’t deceive. (If leaders began a yearslong campaign today to convince us that the Baltimore bridge did not collapse Tuesday morning, would you ever believe them?) Trust your eyes. Trump on Jan. 6 launched the most serious threat to our system of government since the Civil War. You know that. You saw it.

The facts involving Trump are crystal clear, and as news people, we cannot pretend otherwise, as unpopular as that might be with a segment of our readers. There aren’t two sides to facts. People who say the earth is flat don’t get space on our platforms. If that offends them, so be it.

I wish more of the news media was willing to ditch the false equivalency of Trump and the GOP and focus more on the truth regardless of who it might upset.