Some calming thoughts about Trump coverage from a #NeverTrump conservative

One of the most eloquent conservative voices against President Trump belongs to Tom Nichols, a professor at the Naval War College and at Harvard Extension School. Last May he wrote an epic tweetstorm arguing that conservatives should vote for Hillary Clinton, whom he detested, because Trump was “too mentally unstable” to serve as commander-in-chief.

Given Nichols’ anti-Trump credentials, I thought it was interesting to read an op-ed he wrote for The Washington Post over the weekend in which he argued that the media have been overreacting to some of the actions the Trump administration has taken. Among other things, he wrote:

There is plenty of fuel for the president’s critics in these actions, yet Trump’s opponents — especially in the media — seem determined to overreact on even ordinary matters. This is both unwise and damaging to our political culture. America needs an adversarial press and a sturdy system of checks and balances. Unmodulated shock and outrage, however, not only burn precious credibility among the president’s opponents, but eventually will exhaust the public and increase the already staggering amount of cynicism paralyzing our national political life.

I think this is important guidance. As we have discussed, there are reasons to think that Trump represents a unique threat to democracy. But journalists can’t run around with their hair on fire for the next four years. The best way to cover Trump is with calm, fact-based reporting — not with hyperbole that does not hold up to scrutiny.

Tom Rosenstiel and Jack Shafer on how to cover the Trump presidency

Tom Rosenstiel, the co-author of “The Elements of Journalism,” wrote an excellent article for the Brookings Institution recently called “What the post-Trump debate over journalism gets wrong.” In it, he outlines seven steps for how journalists can hold President Trump to account while continuing to practice what he and Bill Kovach call “the journalism of verification.”

This week Jack Shafer of Politico wrote a much snarkier piece, “Put on Your Big-Boy Pants, Journos,” that actually parallels Rosenstiel pretty closely.

NPR’s top news executive on Trump and the role of the media

Michael Oreskes, NPR’s senior vice president of news, sent a toughly worded memo to his staff recently regarding ongoing efforts by President-elect Donald Trump and his aides to delegitimize the news media.

As Oreskes reminds us, the Obama administration has had a difficult relationship with the press as well with its zealous campaign against leakers and its overly restrictive rules regarding access for photojournalists.

There is much here to think about as we prepare for the Trump inauguration on Friday.

Northeastern faculty members debate the CNN and BuzzFeed stories

I thought you would like to see this debate between School of Journalism Director Jonathan Kaufman and me over the CNN and BuzzFeed stories about the Russian dossier containing unverified reports about President-elect Donald Trump’s personal behavior and financial entanglements.

Though both of us agreed that CNN’s report was an example of ethical journalism, we disagreed about BuzzFeed’s decision to publish the raw, unvetted material.