The real fourth estate? Portrayals of Trump’s rise in the foreign media of friendly countries

ABSTRACT

That the news media should operate as an impartial and responsible “fourth estate” in a democracy is a pervasive ideal, but there are serious obstacles – economic, organizational and political – to its achievement in practice. These obstacles, we argue, may be lower when an outlet reports on politics in another country, which is strategically allied to its own. And, for this reason, the quality of news coverage of that country’s politics may be higher in the reporting by foreign media outlets than in the reporting by domestic outlets. This article outlines the theory behind this conjecture and then examines it empirically through a content analysis of media representations of Donald Trump’s rise in two non-American outlets, The Australian and The Guardian. Their coverage, our analysis suggests, approximated fourth-estate ideals more closely than did the domestic coverage of Trump’s rise.

KEYWORDS:

• Media
• fourth estate
• comparative media systems
• Donald Trump
• communication theory

View correction statement:

Correction

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge that funding for this research was provided by the Alfred Deakin Institute at Deakin University, Australia. We also thank Tristan Galloway and Peter Mulherin for their research assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01442872.2021.1883205)

Notes

1 Ironically, as Blumler and Kavanagh (1999, 213) note, more open-minded citizens in need of high-quality information have often had to consume a form of political communication that is “emptier and less nourishing”.

2 The Trump White House has been accused of such behaviour (Borchers 2017).

3 Consistent with this hypothesis, Blumler and Kavanagh (1999, 216) note that the administration of UK Prime Minister Tony Blair suspected it received fairer treatment from the foreign press, given the “cynical obsession of Britain’s national press with trivia, scandal, and negativity … ”

4 The articles of this type resonate with arguments in the populism literature linking the charisma of populist leaders to perceptions of their authenticity. For example, Stanley (2008, 105) explains that “invocation of authenticity and ordinariness is a key aspect of populism’s appeal to the people, as it allows populists to lay claim to genuine representativeness”. Similarly, in Canovan’s (1999, 14) treatment, populist leaders are “vivid individuals who can make politics personal and immediate instead of being remote and bureaucratic”.

5 Hadley Freeman, “Don’t Worry, Donald Trump won’t win. But I’ll sure miss him when he’s gone”.

6 There was no difference between the outlets in this regard: 44 per cent of The Australian articles concentrated on the horserace aspect, and so did 44 per cent of The Guardian articles.

7 These stages do not correspond perfectly with the division in Patterson’s study.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Alfred Deakin Institute Research Grant.

Notes on contributors

Zim Nwokora

Zim Nwokora is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and Policy Studies at Deakin University. His research concentrates on Comparative Politics, with a focus on elections, political parties, and constitutions and has been published in outlets such as American Politics Research, Constellations, Parliamentary Affairs, Party Politics, and Political Studies. He completed his doctorate in Politics at the University of Oxford in 2010 with a dissertation on the American presidential nominating process. Email: [email protected].

Benjamin Isakhan

Benjamin Isakhan is an Associate Professor of Politics and Policy Studies and Founding Director of POLIS, a research network for Politics and International Relations in the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalization at Deakin University, Australia. He is also an Adjunct Senior Research Associate, Department of Politics and International Relations, Faculty of Humanities at the University of Johannesburg. Email: [email protected]

Chengxin Pan

Chengxin Pan is an Associate Professor of International Relations at Deakin University, and a co-editor of the Global Political Sociology series (Palgrave Macmillan). He has published in journals such as the European Journal of International Relations, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Australian Journal of International Affairs, Journal of Contemporary China, and the Pacific Review. Email: [email protected].