Conservative media stands by Trump over Bannon
In round one of Trump vs. Bannon on conservative media, the president is pummeling his former advisor.
From Fox News to the Drudge Report, all the way down the spectrum to far-right conspiracy sites like The Gateway Pundit and InfoWars, headlines Wednesday afternoon painted former presidential adviser Steve Bannon as unstable and self-interested, and President Donald Trump as a forceful defender of his family and administration.
The lead headline on Fox News’ website quoted the president’s incendiary response to Bannon’s criticisms, reading, “’HE LOST HIS MIND’: Trump unloads on Bannon after ex-adviser’s bombshell criticism appears in book excerpts.”
And the first sentence of the story linked to the headline sneered, “It’s probably safe to say the self-professed mastermind behind President Trump’s election won’t be back in 2020.”
At Drudge Report, editor Matt Drudge, who has had an on-again, off-again feud with Bannon, featured an unflattering picture of Bannon and blared, “TRUMP DOWNLOADS ON ‘PRETENDER’ BANNON.”
And The Daily Caller declared, “Trump Puts Bannon In A Body Bag.”
Charlie Sykes, the longtime conservative radio host and MSNBC contributor, said in an email that he was not surprised to see conservative media outlets favoring the president over Bannon.
“The right media’s loyalty has always been to Trump, not Bannon or his ideas,” he said. “In retrospect, it’s interesting how tone deaf Bannon was. He helped create a pro-Trump media ecosystem that demanded loyalty, not ideological consistency. Now that he is perceived as disloyal (and perhaps dangerous), he is going to get the same treatment he used to give the globalist, establishment types.”
The Daily Caller’s editor in chief, Geoffrey Ingersoll, said in an email that “there was no conscious decision” to favor Trump, “although a few of us did say it seemed like sour grapes from Bannon.”
Headlines aside, he noted that story copy read straight, also saying that the site’s first headline on the story—before Trump’s response—did not tip either way: “Bannon: Trump Tower Meeting With Russians Was ‘Treasonous.’”
One notable exception to headlines favoring Trump was at Bannon’s site, Breitbart, which has featured straight-forward coverage. The lead headline on the site read “TRUMP FURIOUS” and featured a picture of Bannon. It did also quote, though, Trump’s assertion that his former advisor had “lost his mind.”
But many Breitbart commenters weighed in on the side of Trump, leading to a gleeful InfoWars story declaring, “Breitbart.com readers have overwhelmingly sided with Donald Trump over his war of words with former White House senior counselor Steve Bannon.”
Given that Breitbart’s lead story has more than 20,000 comments, it’s unclear how InfoWars divined a consensus, but there’s no doubt that, since Trump’s rise, conservative news outlets have found value in favoring him.
An MIT and Harvard study of the conservative news ecosystem during the 2016 GOP primary found that when Fox News’s website was more critical of Trump, the site’s influence decreased while that of the ardently pro-Trump Breitbart rose, making it the most shared-from conservative digital media site during the campaign.
In that early phase, fewer readers shared Fox stories on Facebook and Twitter and they were linked fewer places. But Fox News rebounded during the general election, when it swung behind Trump.
Then, the study found, the site’s shares and links increased again.
“I can’t help thinking of Bannon as the Robespierre of this Trumpian revolution,” Sykes said, “ultimately devoured by the forces he helped release.”