U.S. journalists covering Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and early administration submitted to unprecedented abuse while normalizing and legitimizing his candidacy and official acts. Many justified such coverage as something they had to do because Trump was definitionally newsworthy. This interpretive textual analysis of 75 journalism textbooks from 1894 to 2016 offers a window into a professional discourse that reifies the U.S. presidency as a news value of such unsurpassable significance that the perceived obligation to naturalize presidential behavior overwhelms professional judgment and journalistic autonomy. The analysis also highlights precedent in journalistic discourse for reporters and editors to ignore or de-legitimize candidates they deem unviable or outside mainstream U.S. politics. Recognizing such normative leeway, and expanding the scope of the ethical imperative to “minimize harm,” might make space for journalists to adopt new strategies for covering deceitful and demagogic political actors.
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