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Three duties in a time of Trump

In the turmoil of a Trump election victory, and the dawn of a robust right-wing American government, it is time to do journalism ethics with utmost seriousness.

Journalism ethics is not a set of formal rules that students are forced to memorize and then find these ideals inoperable in the workplace.

Journalism ethics is the heart and soul of why you are a journalist, and why it matters.

Today, this soul-searching begins with a large question: What sort of journalism does America need to meet the great political challenges ahead?

What is the point of journalism practice in a time of Trump?

My answer is: to protect liberal democracy by embracing three related duties:

  • the duty to advance dialogue across racial, ethnic, and economic divisions
  • the duty to explain and defend pluralistic democracy against its foes
  • the duty to practice the method of “pragmatic objectivity”

The duties work together to promote an egalitarian, plural, tolerant, democratic polity, which should be the political goal of public journalism. The duties work against a populist democracy dominated by a “strong man,” where freedom is freedom for the most powerful and abrasive.

The duties oppose the untrammeled, vengeful will of intolerant citizens who see the election as a “winner take all” victory for their side.

trump time

One cannot discuss the point of a practice in the abstract. Journalism ethics begins with some perception of the media’s social context. What is this context?

We live in a time of danger for moderate, liberal democracy with its divisions of power, freedom of expression, protections for the rights of all citizens, and the empowerment of minorities despite the displeasure of traditionalists.

Trump time has been a long time coming.

It has been long prepared for by: bad education, American insularity, and the myth of exceptionalism; incorporation of fundamentalist religion into politics; the deepening of economic inequality; seeing strength in guns and the person of violence; mistaking ‘in-your-face’ ranting for honest, democratic communication; and the worship of fierce partisanship over compromise.

Other contributors: An extreme patriotism which views those who disagree as enemies of the state; regarding America as white, male-dominated, and Christian; an insouciance toward fact and a suspicion of intellect; the preference for character assignation over rational argument; a fear of ‘others’ and the replacement of thought by slogan.

The result? A society populated by too many politically ignorant and apathetic consumer citizens, easy targets of demagogues. Now, these unsteady forces have the power of social media to create a totalitarian mindset in the heart of what was once the world’s greatest liberal democracy.

What to do?

Given this uncertain future, what should journalists do?

There are two options that should not be followed. One option is for journalists to counter the bombast and distorted statements of the Trumpites by producing a bombastic, counter-balancing opposition press. There is already too much rant-induced media.

“Here is where the first media duty arises: the duty to promote dialogue across divisions.”

The second option is for journalists to see themselves, delusionally, as only neutral chroniclers, as stenographers of ‘fact’ as the political drama unfolds. This is an outdated notion of objectivity formulated in the early 1900s for a different social context.

The best response lies between journalistic ranting and the mincing neutrality of stenographic journalism: it is a democratically engaged journalism committed to three duties.

A democratically engaged journalism is not neutral about its ultimate goals. It regards its ethical norms and methods as means to the flourishing of a self-governing citizenry. Here is where the first media duty arises: the duty to promote dialogue across divisions.

In a column on this site over a year ago, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack, I talked about the media’s duty to mend. Journalists have a duty to convene public fora and provide channels of information that allow for frank but respectful dialogue across divisions. They seek to mend the tears in the fabric of the body politic.

In a time of Trump, the duty to practice dialogic journalism is urgent. This means challenging stereotypes and the penchant to demonize. It means linking the victims of hate speech to citizens appalled by such discrimination, building coalitions of cross-cultural support.

Go ‘deep’ politically

However, fostering the right sort of democracy-building conversations is not enough.

Conversations need to be well-informed. Here is where the second duty arises.

Journalism needs to devote major resources to an explanatory journalism that delves deeply into the country’s fundamental political values and institutions, while challenging the myths and fears surrounding issues such as immigration.

The movement of fact-checking web sites is a good idea but insufficient. It is not enough to know that a politician made an inaccurate statement. Many citizens need a re-education in liberal democracy—those broad structures in which specific facts and values takes their place. They will be called on soon to judge many issues that depend on that civic knowledge.

“Journalism needs to devote major resources to an explanatory journalism that delves deeply into the country’s fundamental political values and institutions…”

John Stuart Mill once said that if we do not constantly question why we hold basic beliefs, they become “dead dogma.” How many citizens would be hard-pressed to say what democracy is (beyond voting) or exhibit an understanding of the history and nature of their own constitution beyond phrases such as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”? How many have a virulent and imbalanced commitment to the Second Amendment alone?

Such a democracy is flying blind and vulnerable to demagogues.

Here is a small list of some topics for explanatory political journalism:

  • The idea of a constitutional liberal democracy: Not liberal in the derogatory sense of favoring big government but liberal in making the basis of society the protection of a core of basic liberties. Plus, the idea of constitutional protection of the rights of all citizens, including minorities, against the wavering, often tyrannical, will of the majority.
  • The division of powers: The extent of the powers of a president and his duty to uphold constitutional rights including not threatening action against critical speakers. Also, the idea of judicial independence from any president who would try to tell the courts what rights to recognize or reject.
  • Deep background on immigration: Especially the difference between immigrants and refugees, the international refugee agreements, and the human face of the immigrants and refugees who come to this land.
  • The meaning of political correctness: Its origins, the abuse of the term, and its ‘cover’ for hate speech. Plus investigations into groups that support hate speech and thinly ‘disguised’ racism online.
  • The difference between a free press and a democratic press: A free press values the freedom to say what it likes, no matter what the harm done. A democratic press uses its freedom to strengthen and unify plural democracy, while minimizing harm.

Pragmatic objectivity

In carrying out these two duties, journalists are not neutral chroniclers. They are avid investigators of the facts, but they are not stenographers repeating other people’s alleged facts. They accept the third duty, of pragmatic objectivity—to systematically test the social and political views of themselves, and others.

Those who adopt pragmatic objectivity are engaged journalists who see their norms and methods as means to a larger political goal—providing accurate, verified and well-evidenced interpretations of events and policies as the necessary informational base for democracy. Their stories are not without perspective or conclusions, yet such judgments are evaluated by criteria that go beyond citing specific facts, from logical rigor to coherence with pre-existing knowledge.

“…the third duty, of pragmatic objectivity—to systematically test the social and political views of themselves, and others.”

Pragmatic objectivity recognizes that any code of journalism ethics is based on a more fundamental political and social conception of a good society—in this case an egalitarian and plural democracy. Within this overarching set of values, journalists can go about being as factual, verificational, and impartial in daily practice as they please. But they do not pretend that they are completely neutral, without values and goals. Objectivity is not a value-free zone.

In my book, The Invention of Journalism Ethics, some years ago, I introduced this idea of pragmatic objectivity as a method for testing any form of journalism. My aim was to provide a substitute for the traditional idea of news objectivity as eliminating interpretation and perspective. I believe this conception is now a timely norm for today’s journalism.

Ethics as political morality

In sum, the new social context calls on journalists to clarify their political goals and roles.

In the days ahead, the key issues of journalism ethics will be questions of political morality—the way we think a democracy ought to be organized, and the media’s role in it.

Many journalism conferences focus on practical “tool box” tips, such as using new technology; or, they focus on how to attract audiences through social media.

Yet, when a country enters an uncertain political period, journalists need to return to journalism ethics and political themes, just as such themes arose during the civil rights movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

For many journalists and news organizations, the next several years will be a severe test of their beliefs and ideals—and their will to defend them.

Journalists will not escape the searching question: Why are you a journalist? 

Stephen J. A. Ward is an internationally recognized media ethicist, author and educator. He is a distinguished lecturer in ethics at the University of British Columbia, Courtesy Professor at the University of Oregon, and the founding director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin. His book, Radical Media Ethics: A Global Approach, won the 2016 Tankard Book Award.

Featured photo (top right of page) by Disney/ABC Television Group CC BY-ND

Q & A with Chris Wells: Trump as a Media Mastermind

Chris Wells is an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His latest work, published in Political Communication, examines the many strategies Donald Trump used to generate news coverage. CJE sat down with Wells to discuss what the success of Trump’s attention-grabbing tactics mean for journalism.

CJE: Could you explain a bit about what your study on Trump uncovered? 

Wells: First and foremost, Trump is a media person. He’s been obsessed with getting attention. At one point, he posed as his own spokesperson and contacted news outlets. We kept asking ourselves, “Is he just an incredible strategist?” But, it’s probably more intuitive to him. It’s been his job for 35 years. A strategy feels like it should be thought out, but it’s more second nature to him. I think he’s surveying the environment very closely, when he notices attention to himself is slacking off he does stuff to get talked about. Data scientist David Robinson did an analysis of his tweets. Half are run-of-the-mill campaign tweets, like “Great to see you in Iowa.” Then there are the crazy ones, which are coming from an Android phone. The non-crazy ones are coming from another device, which suggests it’s his staff.

Credit: David Robinson

An analysis of which words appeared in Trump’s tweets sent from Android or iPhone. Analysis and graph by David Robinson.

CJE: These ‘crazy’ tweets seem to garner a lot of media attention. Is there such a thing as bad publicity?

Wells: He’s been at the heart of conflict for a constant 30 years. What we see at the beginning of the primaries, in that environment it might be all publicity is good publicity. We often are coming from the standpoint that we feel uncomfortable with things he saying, but amongst Republican primary voters his policies were very popular. He’s sensitive to how the crowd is responding and he gives the crowd what they want.

Credit: Ronald B. Rapoport

Trump’s supporters were largely supportive of his policy proposals. Analysis and graph by Ronald Rapoport, Alan Abramowitz, and Walter Stone.

CJE: Do you think Trump takes advantage of journalistic norms?

Wells: The issue is the amount of press coverage he earned. The numbers are unbelievable. He got basically as much press attention as much of the other Republican candidates combined. He’s an unusual candidate, but the one single thing about him is his ability to attract media. He noticed he liked attention and that it could benefit him. Earning 2 billion dollars in paid media is astonishing. The press noticed early on that writing about Trump got them a lot of clicks. Outlets want to get attention because they’re selling ads. But what leads them to lavish that much attention on one person? The metric which allows everyone to see number of clicks is kind of amoral. It’s totally agnostic. We’re just doing it because it gets us money. You haven’t applied any ethical standards to it, which is the issue.

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Trump generated nearly $2 million in free media. Analysis and graph by The New York Times.

CJE: What is your biggest concern with Trump’s media influence, and how should journalists ideally respond to present and future Trump tactics?

Wells: The press needs to have an agenda and decide what it wants to cover and not chase around the candidates exclusively. Asking candidates something like, “We’ve done this detailed reporting on the nature of the economy and here are the major issues, please respond.” We’ve almost entirely neglected to create in the public’s mind what the real problems are and that seems like a massive failure. The bigger issue is being a little reflective of where you are allocating your news media. You have to get clicks, to get advertising revenues. The question is how and to what extent can media deal with that pressure? That’s the latest shift in this trend.

CJE: Do you have any advice for journalists going forward? 

Wells: I urge journalists to think about how can you create content that is deeper, more substantive and more issues-based and also still attracts the audience. How do we find formats that will attract audiences enough to sustain news outlet and can do this real issues-driven work? How can you bring that format out? More importantly, how can you deliver real content that will inform people? We need to gives the public hope and mobilization.

Feature image by Michael Vadon/CC BY-SA

Don’t look to flash polls to determine a debate winner

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the second presidential debate. Photo by Bill B/CC BY

Hours after the first presidential debate of 2016 concluded, Republican nominee Donald Trump took to Twitter to proclaim his victory. “Thank You! Four new #DebateNight Polls with the Movement winning. Together, we will make America Safe & Great Again! DonaldJTrump.com,” he tweeted. Underneath Mr. Trump’s message was a graphic displaying four polls from Breitbart, Variety, NJ.com and The Hill, that all conclusively showed Trump winning the debate.

But the polls Trump cited should not be taken as certain indicators of the debate results. Flash polls like the ones mentioned above, as well as online polls from other publications like MSNBC and Time magazine from after the first debate, are not at all scientific. As a result, while Trump and his surrogates propagate their message of victory using these polls as evidence, the polls provide no actual insight about who won or lost a particular debate.

One reason for not putting much value in the results of these polls is that most who respond to them  are frequent visitors of the website where the poll is hosted. It is not surprising then, that on Brietbart.com, a conservative, pro-Trump news outlet, more than 160,000 people voted that they thought Mr. Trump won the first debate compared to 51,000 who believed the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton won. In many cases, the results of these polls are merely reflective of the audiences that the websites attract and not potential American voters as a whole.

“They’re just garbage. They’re opt-in polls,” Professor Dhavan Shah, Maier-Bascom Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said. “In fact, many of them can be machined. You literally can set up systems that go and log in and vote hundreds of times, thousands of times. You can tilt the scales in one direction or the other. They do not represent any sample. Period.”

Users and advocates can easily affect the result of these polls. As Shah points out, computer programs can vote hundreds or thousands of times. These polls are more a reflection of fan support than anything else, as many message boards during the debate called for Trump supporters to flock to these various polls to support him. Sometimes just a simple refresh of an Internet browser allows debate watchers to vote for their candidate over and over again. A voter doesn’t even need to watch the debate to vote in such polls.

“Think of it like if you’re at Lambeau Field and the referees call holding on the Packers – 60,000 people at Lambeau Field say, ‘that’s not holding,’” Mike Wagner, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication said. “That’s a huge number, 60,000 people, but of course they’re highly skewed toward liking the Packers. And that’s the same for someone who would go to [conservative website] Drudge to fill out a poll or [liberal leaning] MSNBC to fill out a poll. And so the difference is in scientifically valuable public opinion surveys everyone has an equal opportunity of getting contacted which is not the case when you’re talking about an Internet web poll.”

The CNN/ORC post-debate poll is a scientific poll conducted in the hours after the debate. Screenshot from CNN.com

Post-debate scientific polls like the CNN/ORC poll or PPP poll are instead conducted using pre-screened debate watchers who planned on watching the debate and said they were willing to answer a poll immediately after the debate about their thoughts. And while these poll samples might slightly skew toward a particular party, their slight partisan imbalance doesn’t make the poll invalid because these polls are still representative of the United States’ voting profile as a whole.

CNN/ORC and PPP also do not conduct these polls as a means of attracting attention to their content, but instead to help inform the public.  Flash polls, Wagner said, are designed to drive clicks and attract attention to the host website. They can be trying not so much to gauge opinion as to drive opinion.

“I wish they [online websites that conduct flash polls] would consider how running the results of a poll that is substantively meaningless harms their brand, but that doesn’t seem to be a concern for some of these places,” Wagner said. “I would actually make the argument that it isn’t ethical for journalistic outlets to report the results of unscientific polls.”

Trump’s campaign frequently reports these polls to build support for his campaign, but it is hard to condemn him for doing so, according to Chris Wells, an associate professor in UW-Madison’s journalism school. Wells notes that many groups, political and otherwise, try to build support using unscientific online polls. But according to Wells, what journalists are doing or not doing to help people understand what these online polls actually represent raises ethical issues.

Many unscientific polls do get covered, but their flawed methodology is seldom mentioned. They are cherry-picked and used as equal evidence to counter a more scientific poll or focus group-based study. But because debate watchers can easily opt-in to game the system, voting countless times to support their own views, these polls have little actual merit.

“It’s as valuable as saying, ‘Well, I can look at out my window and see that it’s sunny here in Madison, and so therefore it is sunny in Seattle, Washington,’” Wagner said. “There is no bearing upon what you see in an Internet-based flash poll and reality.”

Trump repeated his claim that the polls had deemed him the winner after the second presidential debate. Politifact rated that assertion a “pants on fire” false claim.

Ben Pickman is a second-year student in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UW-Madison. He is double-majoring in journalism with a reporting focus and history. His main journalistic interests include sports media and sports media ethics, sports and society, and political reporting.

Ethics and Elections Event December 8

Please join the Center for Journalism Ethics December 8 for a panel — “Journalism Ethics & Election 2016” — at 6:30 p.m. at the Overture Center in Madison. We will explore the role of political journalism in the federal elections, particularly the presidential race, covering questions of truth, trust and verification.

Panelists

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Molly Ball, The Atlantic

Molly Ball is a staff writer for The Atlantic, where she is a leading voice in the magazine’s coverage of U.S. politics. She has been awarded the Toner Prize for Excellence in Political Reporting, the Sandy Hume Memorial Award for Excellence in Political Journalism, and the Lee Walczak Award for Political Analysis for her coverage of political campaigns and issues. She appears regularly as an analyst on NBC’s Meet the Press, CBS’s Face the Nation, PBS’s Washington Week, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and NPR.

Ball previously reported for Politico, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and the Las Vegas Sun. She has worked for newspapers in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Cambodia, as well as the New York Times and the Washington Post. She is a graduate of Yale University and was a 2009 recipient of the Knight-Wallace journalism fellowship at the University of Michigan. In 2007, she won $100,000 on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Ball grew up in Idaho and Colorado. She lives in Virginia with her husband and three children.

Craig GilbertGILBERT, NWS, PORTER, 1. - Journal Sentinel Washington D.C. correspondant Craig Gilbert. October 9, 2013. GARY PORTER/GPORTER@JOURNALSENTINEL.COM, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Craig Gilbert is the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Washington Bureau Chief and author of “The Wisconsin Voter” political blog. Gilbert has covered national and state politics for the paper since 1990, has covered every presidential race since 1992, and has written extensively about the electoral battle for the swing states of the Midwest. He was a 2009-10 Knight-Wallace fellow at the University of Michigan, where he studied public opinion, survey research, voting behavior and statistics, and was a Lubar Fellow at Marquette University Law School, researching an in-depth study of one of the nation’s most polarized places, metropolitan Milwaukee. He previously worked for the Miami Herald, the Kingston (NY) Daily Freeman and was a speechwriter for New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Gilbert has a B.A. in History from Yale University.    

 

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Photo courtesy of Coburn Dukehart, Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.

Michael Wagner, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Mike Wagner is associate professor and Louis A. Maier Faculty Development Fellow in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He directs the Physiology and Communication Effects Lab. He is affiliated with the Department of Political Science and the La Follette School of Public Affairs. He’s published more than 40 books, journal articles and book chapters in the areas of political communication, journalism, public opinion, and biology and politics, including the book, Political Behavior of the American Electorate. A former radio/television news reporter and anchor, Wagner is an award-winning teacher and adviser. He is the current Forum Editor for the journal Political Communication and a regular guest host on the local radio program, “A Public Affair.”

 

Photo courtesy of Al Tompkins

Moderator: Kathleen Bartzen Culver, director of the Center for Journalism Ethics.

Kathleen Bartzen Culver is an assistant professor in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism & Mass Communication and director of the Center for Journalism Ethics. Long interested in the implications of digital media on journalism and public interest communication, Culver focuses on the ethical dimensions of social tools, technological advances and networked information. She combines these interests with a background in law and free expression. She also serves as visiting faculty for the Poynter Institute  and education curator for MediaShift.

Ethics in the news – Nov. 24

CNN journalist in a Nov. 19 tweet reported the passage of a House bill on immigration that could limit the number of Syrians the U.S. accepts. Then, she tacked on a sentence:

 

Later that evening, she tweeted that she apologized for editorializing.

 

But, her apology wasn’t enough to save her from a two-week suspension.

Former center director Stephen A. Ward has written about the changing norm of objectivity in journalism, but he is adamant that the principle not be abandoned.

The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald wrote that expressing opinion isn’t uniformly punished at CNN. But, that Labott’s opinion wasn’t good for business made it worthy of punishment, he wrote.

Mathew Ingram at Fortune Magazine agreed that Labott’s sin was not expressing any opinion – it was expressing a political opinion.

Afterall, earlier that day a different CNN journalist had asked President Obama a rather blunt, editorialized, sensationalized question. HuffPost’s Michael Calderone wrote that these situations  highlight “the often arbitrary distinction between analysis and punishment-worthy editorializing or opining.”

In other ethics news this week:

Ethics Center in the news:

The Art of Covering Donald Trump: Ten Strategies for Journalists

He has been called a “sham.” His campaign was initially dismissed as a “charade.” The Huffington Post relegated him to the entertainment page. And while elections experts maintain that he still is not the most likely candidate to win his party’s nomination for the presidency, the mainstream media spent late summer and early fall 2015 calling him “frontrunner.”

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has caused fits for his opponents to be sure, but his candidacy raises interesting ethical questions for the news media covering him, as well. Should mentions of Trump’s failed marriages, multiple bankruptcies and laundry list of controversial statements about all manner of people and groups be regular features of his media attention? How should Trump’s unique use (as compared to his opponents) of Twitter be covered?

In a photo dated Sept. 3, The Republican presidential front-runner met privately with Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus Thursday afternoon, and soon after, came out to the lobby of Trump Tower to declare that he has signed a loyalty pledge. Photo and cutline by Michael Vadon

In a photo dated Sept. 3, The Republican presidential front-runner met privately with Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus Thursday afternoon, and soon after, came out to the lobby of Trump Tower to declare that he has signed a loyalty pledge.
Photo and cutline by Michael Vadon

News practices expert Elizabeth Skewes, a professor of journalism and media studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder, worries concerns about the ethics of covering Trump are coming too late.

“I wish this question had been explored when he really started running,” Skewes said. She added one reason for Trump’s place atop most polls is because “the media were covering him so much.”

George Washington University political scientist and blogger at The Monkey Cage John Sides conducted an analysis confirming Skewes’ hunch that Trump’s place in the polls correlates highly with how much attention he receives.

Skewes noted that “all that coverage gave Trump a legitimacy with voters that he might not have otherwise had.”

Imagine, for example, if Trump had been afforded the same (lack of) attention recent GOP nomination dropout Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal had received from the mainstream media.

Digital media law and ethics expert Paul Voakes of the University of Colorado-Boulder has been struck by how a political novice has been able to grab hold of the media narrative. “Media coverage of the Republican nomination should not be driven by the latest sound bite from Donald Trump, but sometimes it appears as though it is.”

So, should the media treat Trump differently? Not so fast, say the media ethics experts.

University of St. Thomas media ethics professor Wendy Wyatt argued that, “covering a candidate like Donald Trump shouldn’t be all that different from covering any other candidate.”

Top Ten Strategies for Covering Trump (and everyone else…)

The ethics experts I talked to offered a range of strategies for covering Trump, most of which they would want to apply to all of the other candidates for the Republican and Democratic nominations for President of the United States.

  1. Side-by-side comparisons of the candidates’ positions and experience

Skewes said the side-by-sides could even come “in chart form” so readers could compare the candidates’ experience, proposals and the likelihood their proposals would work. Wyatt added that journalists “should provide the context citizens need to make sense of news about all candidates.” Skewes suggested a comparison that highlighted candidates’ positions, experience, and an expert analysis of whether the plan is possible (or what conditions would be required to make the plan a reality).

  1. Ask the “why” and the “how” questions of all candidates

Saying that “I will build a wall and make Mexico pay for it” is not a plan. Asking Trump why the nation needs a wall, why the wall would stop the problem he articulates and how he intends to get Mexico to build it is important. Trump has talked about his views regarding why he wants to build one, but he couldn’t even handle a gentle role-playing question from Stephen Colbert (who was pretending to be the president of Mexico) about how he would persuade Mexico to build the wall. As Skewes noted, “he can’t fire Congress.” Thus, getting Trump to explain how he will get some of his difficult to implement ideas, such as rounding up 11 million people who are illegally in the United States and returning them to their country of origin, through the U.S. Congress is a required task for all campaign reporters.

  1. Do not mistake Twitter for public opinion

Voakes was quick to remind journalists and their audience that, “the danger in social media is to treat it and report it in a way that implies this is valid public opinion.” It does not. Research led by W. Russell Neuman has shown that there are times when Twitter traffic both precedes and responds to news coverage, but scholars do not yet have a handle on the twittersphere’s relationship with broad public opinion. After all, only about a quarter of Internet-using Americans are on Twitter – and they are much more interested in politics on average than those who do not tweet.

  1. (Mostly) ignore the outrageous

Trump’s social media behavior is particularly inflammatory – insulting other candidates for president, actresses and the people of Iowa. Trump’s recent riff on the veracity of Ben Carson’s claim that he was foiled from stabbing a friend because of a belt buckle is an example of the atypical style Trump employs on the campaign trail as compared to his GOP and Democratic counterparts. Trump is the outrageous gift that keeps on giving, but Voakes cautions that running to air or print the latest most outrageous statement of the day means that reporters, “will continue to report Trump out of proportion with A) other GOP candidates and B) the substance of what he is actually saying.”

  1. Explore proposals for a more inclusive debate strategy

While the ship has somewhat sailed on this one, Skewes called for a different debate format that was not primarily organized by a candidate’s standing in the polls. She said that having a main stage and “JV” debate gives the sense that candidates on the undercard and the main event candidates “at the end podiums. . .don’t matter. Just don’t focus on the center of the stage, it is almost hypnotic (the visual cue that the centered candidates are the important ones).” Other suggestions included a debate format where five or six of the crowded field of Republican candidates (drawn at random) appeared together at a time so that frontrunners and those at the bottom of the polls would be more likely to be mixed together and given more equal attention.

  1. Journalists should push all candidates to be specific in their proposals and to respond to substantive critiques of them.

If journalists are especially successful at #s 10 and 9, they should force candidates to respond to serious questions about their proposals. This is an especially difficult challenge when covering Trump because, as Voakes said, Trump is, “this personality who was entertaining and controversial before he announced his candidacy (and he) knows how to manipulate the dynamics of the soundbite. . .and now we have a platform of social media that Trump understands better than any of the other candidates” when it comes to saying what he wants to say — and nothing else — in response to critiques. Journalists will need to make peace with the inevitable attacks that will come their way if they call Trump out for not giving specific answers to important questions.

  1. Don’t talk to Trump

Echoing the well-worn journalism admonition that, “if your mother says she loves you, check it out” Skewes called on reporters to consider that, “the best way to cover Trump is by not talking to Trump. Talk to people who know him better, people who work with him and experts and other professionals who can analyze what he claims. We need that outside voice for all the candidates but particularly with Trump. He A) doesn’t realize his own limitations and B) says ‘that’s not true’ whenever he is challenged.”

  1. Journalists should consider things from all candidates’ lives that may affect their ability to govern

Politicians are humans. As presidential scholar Fred Greenstein has written about extensively, how presidents approach decision-making, stress and organizational capacity are crucial to their performance in office. Voakes added, “It would be valuable to see if the media can get people to engage (with) the candidates in a way that is beyond charisma.”

Fellow GOP candidates Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio regularly highlight their immigrant roots but oppose more liberal proposals related to immigration reform. Jeb Bush has a father and a brother who have been president but insists he is his own man and will not be relying on the Bush family name to become the family’s third occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Carly Fiorina has been a business executive at the highest levels – but was fired. Hillary Clinton has been First Lady, a U.S. Senator, and Secretary of State who had her husband’s infidelities become a national punch line and the basis for impeachment proceedings.

Almost all of the candidates are married with children and many, Trump most certainly included, have had portions of their personal lives, and their kids’ lives, splashed all over the front page of the tabloids. Most are highly educated. Most are wealthy. They also lie. How have their lives – their opportunities and adversities – affected how they may make decisions at the highest political level?

  1. Journalists should help citizens understand who all candidates are as human beings

CNBC’s Becky Quick got at this in the widely panned debate she co-moderated when she quoted a critique of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg from Trump’s own website that Trump denied saying during the debate. The execution of her fact check was off (she initially could not remember from where she found the damning quote), but it was the right instinct. Wyatt went further, calling on journalists to ask about the candidates, “Are they people of integrity, have they been truthful, have they demonstrated respect for others?” and so forth.

  1. Stop focusing on the polls

Trump regularly touts his position in the national public opinion polls as evidence that he is for real. He may be. But while the media ethicists I spoke with didn’t bring this up, I will use my personal privilege as a political scientist and journalism professor to point out that a candidate’s performance in the polls at this (still early!) stage in the process is not highly correlated with whether she or he ends up being the nominee. Mitt Romney led some GOP primary polls in 2012 to be sure, but so did Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and Herman Cain. Some of the also-rans led for a long period of time. None of them led for as long as Trump to be sure, but it is still far too early to be extrapolating one’s position in the primary polls a few months before the first primary election to their likelihood of winning the nomination.

In fact, when it comes to building a campaign organization and earning the endorsements of the party elites who are widely regarded as being key to winning the nomination, Trump appears to be at or near the bottom of the pack.

For that matter, using the polls to declare a candidate dead is dangerous as well. Less than a month before winning the 2004 Iowa caucus on his way to the Democratic nomination for president, John Kerry was polling at 4 percent

Following these strategies is hard work. It is especially hard when Trump is likely to answer tough questions about the details of his policies by bragging that they’ll be “great,” by attacking his opponents as “losers” or turning his attention to the media for asking “nasty questions.” As Skewes cautions, “the media should not be in the business of trying to ensure that Trump does not get elected,” but they can provide a more comprehensive picture of his candidacy to the voting public.

Michael W. Wagner is an associate professor and a Louis A. Maier Faculty Development Fellow in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is also affiliated with the Department of Political Science.