USA Today on Thursday had what one might call a lightbulb moment. In a front page story, the paper claimed, “Right and left fed up with Trump clamor.” On the front page, writers Morgan Watkins and Todd Spangler looked at whether the priorities of journalists are misplaced: “It’s not just Republican supporters of Trump who are tiring of the jokes, innuendo and articles aimed at the president or the people around him and whether they colluded with Russia. Even some Democrats” feel the same way.
Watkins and Spangler observed, “Six months after becoming president, and with a job-approval rating of less than 42%, Trump remains the hottest media commodity. But some are beginning to ask whether all that scrutiny on the man and his tweets is taking attention from tax reform, health care and other important issues before Congress.”
Though the story is most prominently placed in USA Today, it actually originated in the Detroit Free Press (another Gannett branded paper) and was cross-published at USA Today. The article featured opinions not often seen in the Trump-obsessed press:
In Dearborn Heights, 38-year-old advocate and activist Suehaila Amen, who works with the area’s large Arab-American and Muslim community, said that while Russia’s important, “we have more serious issues to be concerned about.”
She said she worries that while the news media's focus has been on the campaign and the prospect that laws have been broken, attention to other matters — such as the impact of millions of people potentially losing health care coverage, or of a partially reinstated travel ban on families from several majority-Muslim nations, or of deportations separating families across the U.S. — has been occasional, at best.
It’s nice that USA Today is now considering whether some of the hyperbolic Trump stories are over the top, but the paper has been part of them. In January, USA Today wondered if the President will “kill” the “beloved Big Bird.”
Showing that Trump just can’t win with the news outlet, writer Heidi Przbyla in February insisted that the President was “too late on hate, critics say.” Apparently, condemning anti-Semitism wasn’t good enough.
In February, USA Today’s Przbyla offered a valentine to Emily’s List, touting “Women across the USA marshal political forces” against Trump.
