Challenging the 'Coherency Bias' in Trump Coverage
Check out my latest piece for The New Republic and stick around for some additional thoughts on the topic.
I’ve got a new piece out today over at The New Republic. It’s about coherency bias and journalists’ tendency to sanitize Donald Trump’s speech for broad public consumption. You should go check it out.
Today’s newsletter for paid subscribers is going to build on that idea a bit. Consider it a companion post.
As I note in my TNR piece, this is a topic I first tackled back in 2020 when I was working at Media Matters for America. The pandemic had just begun, and Trump was being his erratic self. The example I used was Trump using a trip to the CDC to talk about Fox News ratings, launch a couple of personal attacks, and rant about his attempt to extort Ukraine into providing dirt on Joe Biden — all information that was left out of mainstream reporting on his comments. But I could have used any number of other examples.
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