Is Trump Drowning Out Other News?
President Donald Trump  speaks to members of the media after  he  returned to the White House from Florida on September 14th  2017. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
But that coverage comes at a cost.  The president  is hardly the only important political actor. Congress gets far less attention  even if it is the body actually developing most of the national policies that will affect Americans. State and local governments get paltry coverage in comparison  although the work they do has the most direct effect on our daily lives.
This seems particularly relevant in the  Donald Trump  era. Even by presidential standards   Trump  is unusually successful in drawing media coverage.  He  gets coverage for the usual things presidents doâforeign travel  addresses and rallies  bill signings  etc.âbut also for tweets and incendiary statements most other presidents simply never made. Yet newspapers aren't getting bigger and 24-hour news channels can't add additional hours to their days. Are other stories losing out?
Now  there are plausible causes for this trend other than  Trump 's attention-grabbing behavior. It's possible the issue just isn't as salient now because it's seen as an ongoing matter rather than a new one. It's possible the issue drew more attention in the recent past because Barack Obama  as an African American  was expected to do more to address the issue of police killings of black citizens. Nonetheless  the trend is consistent with the idea that more coverage of  Trump  leads to less coverage of everything else.
A concern expressed repeatedly by observers of the  Trump  presidency is that most of the crises he has faced have been of his own making. How will he behave once he faces a challenge of office that he didn't create? In fact  he's been facing challenges all along. The killing of unarmed civilians by police officers remains a serious crisis  as does North Korea  opioid abuse  climate change  flooding  and other matters. To the extent  Trump  has an approach to dealing with such crises  it seems to be to draw attention away from them.
[TGT] speaks to members of the media after   [TGT]   returned to the White House from Florida on September 14th  2017. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
But that coverage comes at a cost.   [TGT] is hardly the only important political actor. Congress gets far less attention  even if it is the body actually developing most of the national policies that will affect Americans. State and local governments get paltry coverage in comparison  although the work they do has the most direct effect on our daily lives.
This seems particularly relevant in the   [TGT] era. Even by presidential standards    [TGT] is unusually successful in drawing media coverage.   [TGT]   gets coverage for the usual things presidents doâforeign travel  addresses and rallies  bill signings  etc.âbut also for tweets and incendiary statements most other presidents simply never made. Yet newspapers aren't getting bigger and 24-hour news channels can't add additional hours to their days. Are other stories losing out?
Now  there are plausible causes for this trend other than   [TGT]  's attention-grabbing behavior. It's possible the issue just isn't as salient now because it's seen as an ongoing matter rather than a new one. It's possible the issue drew more attention in the recent past because Barack Obama  as an African American  was expected to do more to address the issue of police killings of black citizens. Nonetheless  the trend is consistent with the idea that more coverage of  Trump  leads to less coverage of everything else.
A concern expressed repeatedly by observers of the  Trump  presidency is that most of the crises he has faced have been of his own making. How will he behave once he faces a challenge of office that he didn't create? In fact  he's been facing challenges all along. The killing of unarmed civilians by police officers remains a serious crisis  as does North Korea  opioid abuse  climate change  flooding  and other matters. To the extent  Trump  has an approach to dealing with such crises  it seems to be to draw attention away from them.