The American media, as usual in the post-Vietnam era, really feels its need to be neutral when America goes to war. If the president is Republican, they sound determined to proclaim it's a failure from the first assault.
Today the press is shaking its head in disgust at the conduct of the Iran war. This time its presidential target being President Trump, a president they detest, and whatever he is about at a given moment, settling in to a routine of disparaging his handling of the war in Iran.
Here’s but one headline example, this one from The Washington Post:
By nearly every metric, the U.S. is losing the Iran war
“It’s irrefutable that the U.S. failed in its main strategic goals,” one expert said.
There’s more headlines out there like that one, but that one will suffice as an example of the media mindset on the subject of Trump and Iran.
And the President is not hesitating to respond. Here’s this headline from the Associated Press that amazingly appeared in a blink on late Friday afternoon.
Trump says he is banning CNN, MSNOW and Politico from the White House
The AP story reported:
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday that he was banning CNN, MSNOW and Politico from the White House due to what he called unfavorable coverage, and threatened that more such media prohibitions could be coming — offering his administration’s latest test of constitutional First Amendment protections guaranteeing the freedom of the press.”
For those with a historical mindset, over there at Amazon is this headline for a book by Ohio University’s Alexander G. Lovelace on the media during another war involving the U.S.. That would be The Media Offensive: How the Press and Public Opinion Shaped Allied Strategy during World War II
Among other book blurbs - and catch the first sentence! - the promo for this one reads:
World War II was a media war. President Franklin D. Roosevelt used the press to a great extent, of course, but as the war progressed, the media also came to influence commanders' decisions on the battlefield. Rescuing General Douglas MacArthur from the Philippines in deference to public opinion forced the Allies to divide the Pacific War between two competing theaters. Omar Bradley's concern over US public opinion convinced General Dwight D. Eisenhower to include Americans in the final assault against Axis forces in Tunisia. General George S. Patton Jr. raced across Sicily to gain media attention and British respect.
In other words, the media was not only not absent from negative coverage of FDR’s conduct of the war, the media barons of the day and their reporters made a point of being involved in a decidedly positive fashion, their coverage encouraging the President’s conduct of the war and that of his various generals in both the Pacific and European theaters.
Alas, this once decidedly positive way to cover American involvement in a monumental war has gone the way of ancient history. A result, it is safe to say, of the seriously negative government-media relations from the Vietnam War. In which case the media of the day felt themselves deliberately deceived by the Johnson and Nixon administrations of the day, with their coverage reflecting that.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Vietnam era is long gone. Make that long, long gone. And in the 21st century era of instant, computer-driven communications it is decidedly not a good thing to have the American media out there with an axe to grind, making the President of any given moment - President Trump in this instance - a target for who knows what negative axe of media coverage.
It is, however, very safe to say that President Trump gets the media game that is being played with the coverage of his Iran policy. Already he is making news with a decidedly blunt headline like this one from The New York Post:
Trump says he has a ‘big decision’ coming up on Iran: ‘Do I want to go in and annihilate them?’
Safe to say it takes no imagination to believe the newsrooms of the American media, filled with journos who can’t despise this President enough, are busy confabbing amongst themselves. Prepping to launch a barrage of negative war coverage when Trump makes his move.
In other words, the American people, going about their business in good faith, will not be surprised at two things.
The first is the probability that the President will in fact soon launch another phase of the Iran War, a phase which the President will surely present as the phase that will end the war and do so with victory.
And the second phase will be an all-too-expected dump of seriously negative media coverage. Media coverage that will be designed, assuming it comes before the mid-term elections, to so discredit the President that it lays the groundwork for a GOP defeat in the 2026 elections - and lays the groundwork for a massive GOP defeat in the 2028 presidential elections.
All of which is to say, that between the anticipated negative media coverage of the President and the Iran War (and more!) and the President’s decidedly direct response in banning various outlets from the White House, the relations between the media and this President will be front and center as the 2026 election season arrives.
