{"id":121025,"date":"2025-09-05T15:50:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T15:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/121025\/"},"modified":"2025-09-05T15:50:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T15:50:07","slug":"why-is-much-of-the-media-ignoring-questions-about-trumps-health-margaret-sullivan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/121025\/","title":{"rendered":"Why is much of the media ignoring questions about Trump\u2019s health? | Margaret Sullivan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prestigious news organizations gave scant attention when, for several days recently, Donald Trump<\/a> faded from public view. Other than some social media posts and some blurry golf-course images, the normally ubiquitous president seemed almost to disappear.<\/p>\n

But most of Big Journalism gave that subject a pass.<\/p>\n

Given Trump\u2019s obvious health problems \u2013 swollen ankles, an uneven gait, bruised hands and instances of verbal confusion \u2013 the media silence struck a lot of people as hypocrisy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy are the biggest newsrooms silent?\u201d demanded John Passantino, who writes for the media newsletter Status. \u201cNo front-page write ups. No broadcast packages.\u201d Trump\u2019s health problems and near disappearance \u201cbarely registered in mainstream coverage\u201d.<\/p>\n

By contrast, the media went overboard with unrelenting coverage of Joe Biden\u2019s old age, but it came late. Almost all of it followed the then president\u2019s shockingly weak debate appearance during his 2024 re-election campaign.<\/p>\n

There was plenty of finger-pointing \u2013 even a bestselling book by two media bigwigs \u2013 about the failures to report Biden\u2019s decline earlier and about the White House\u2019s efforts to obscure it.<\/p>\n

This time, over the Labor Day weekend, wild rumors swirled on social media that Trump had died, or had suffered a debilitating stroke or a series of them. The much-read Drudge Report published a story with this headline: PRESIDENT HEALTH CRISIS DEEPENS.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, JD Vance seemed to target big media.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the media you consumed told you that Donald Trump was on his deathbed because he didn\u2019t do a press conference for three days, imagine what else they\u2019re lying to you about,\u201d Vance posted on X.<\/p>\n

That translated, for the gullible, into the usual trashing of the mainstream press, a regular talking point from Magaworld.<\/p>\n

In fact, big journalism was guilty of nothing of the sort; if anything, they took Trump\u2019s disappearance too lightly.<\/p>\n

As is often the case with Trump and his allies, there\u2019s a lot of projection going on.<\/p>\n

\u201cImagine what else they\u2019re lying to you about\u201d is something that might, much more accurately, be said about Trump and his minions on any number of subjects.<\/p>\n

Trump joined in, too. \u201cIt\u2019s fake news \u2013 it\u2019s so fake. That\u2019s why the media has so little credibility,\u201d he responded to a Fox News question that conveniently set up this round of media-bashing. (\u201cHow did you find out over the weekend that you were dead?\u201d asked Peter Doocy at a briefing after Trump re-emerged.)<\/p>\n

Nonsense, of course. Most of the mainstream media was overly cautious, if anything, in approaching the topic.<\/p>\n

When the New York Times did get around to covering the issue, the paper took up the topic obliquely \u2013 focusing primarily on the false rumors of Trump\u2019s death and then, much lower in a long story, addressing the paucity of information about his actual health. The headline: President Trump Is Alive. The Internet was Convinced Otherwise.<\/p>\n

The story puts in historical context the tendency of White House staffs to obscure the physical problems of American presidents \u2013 from Woodrow Wilson\u2019s stroke to John F Kennedy\u2019s chronic back pain. Eventually, it makes the point that \u201cjustifiable concerns and questions about Mr Trump\u2019s health have often been met with obfuscation or minimal explanation from the people around him\u201d.<\/p>\n

(The White House in July explained Trump\u2019s bruising and swelling as chronic venous insufficiency, but downplayed the condition as benign and common for older people; his doctor pronounced him in excellent health.)<\/p>\n

Even after an assassination attempt on Trump last year, no medical briefings were held. And, to my recollection, there was precious little investigative follow-up on that.<\/p>\n

Yet, amid all of this, the White House press secretary claimed that Trump has been \u201ccompletely transparent about his health with the public, unlike his predecessor\u201d.<\/p>\n

As usual, in Trumpworld, a lie outpaces the truth, and everything is Biden\u2019s fault.<\/p>\n

So what does responsible media coverage of this topic look like? The question evokes the Goldilocks fairy tale: what\u2019s too hot? What\u2019s too cold? And what\u2019s just right?<\/p>\n

\u201cEvidence-based assessments of a president\u2019s health are absolutely fair game\u201d for journalists, Bill Grueskin of Columbia Journalism School told Associated Press media reporter David Bauder.<\/p>\n

And when someone as omnipresent in the media as Trump drops out of view for days? That\u2019s fair game, too.<\/p>\n

With Trump now in his 80th year \u2013 he turned 79 in June \u2013 these questions are not going away. Rampant speculation certainly isn\u2019t the answer, but it tends to flood in when there is a vacuum of real information.<\/p>\n

The unquestioning acceptance of White House reassurance isn\u2019t the answer either.<\/p>\n

In good journalism, \u201cjust right\u201d is founded on skepticism and addressed by persistence \u2013 by doggedly digging out the facts and presenting them forthrightly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prestigious news organizations gave scant attention when, for several days recently, Donald Trump faded from public view. Other…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-121025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}