Journalists cover power grabs from an openly pro-democracy bent
On December 6, 2023, a group of 10 Republicans in Wisconsin who had submitted an “alternative” slate of electors falsely claiming that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election agreed to withdraw their phony electoral slate, identified Joe Biden as the legitimate winner, and admitted that their behavior served a scheme to illegally overturn the free and fair presidential election.
The admission, part of a proposed legal settlement in a civil suit, was reported in local and national media with striking clarity. Reports clearly indicated that the false slate of electors had no basis in reality. They noted that Joe Biden was the unambiguous winner of the election. They highlighted the partisan asymmetry of using false claims to overturn the 2020 election to serve requests made by then-President Trump. The reporting was an example of how journalism that is rooted in a pro-democracy orientation can admirably serve the democratic experiment.
Of course, this movement also faces very real struggles. Last year, I predicted that a backlash was coming — one where pro-democracy reporting (and, as it turns out, scholarship) would be treated in some corners as biased, dangerous, and un-American. My friends and colleagues Kathleen Searles and Rebekah Tromble wrote in this space last year that journalists reporting verifiably true things face “professional crisis” because of the harassment they regularly receive.
Despite the very real dangers facing those who report, investigate, and study the verifiable truth, I predict, perhaps too optimistically, that more journalists will cover unfettered power grabs (such as those promised by former President Trump on the 2024 campaign trail) with a pro-democracy orientation. Moreover, I predict that more journalists will report, in the words of Jay Rosen, “not the odds, but the stakes.”
When journalists — and academic researchers, for that matter — produce transparent and verifiable evidence about undemocratic behaviors, they will be attacked. It will be up to all of us who care about the role of transparent and accurate information in a democracy to speak up on their behalf.
Michael W. Wagner is the Helen Firstbrook Franklin Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin.