The White House’s new media ‘bias’ tracker is a desperate gimmick | Margaret Sullivan

Donald Trump has used the mainstream press as a punching bag for many years, but in recent weeks his jabs have become even more frequent – and more ill-tempered.

He threatened to sue the BBC for $1bn last month over the editing of a documentary that aired more than a year ago. He called one White House reporter “piggy”, and told another – the well-regarded Mary Bruce of ABC News – that she was a “terrible person and a terrible reporter”. He called a New York Times reporter “ugly, both inside and out”.

And last Friday, his White House unveiled the latest wrinkle: a new website that supposedly tracks media bias. It offers a “Hall of Shame” and “media offenders of the week” to focus on reporting that the president dislikes. It names individuals and news organizations, and it points to the Boston Globe and CBS News, among others, for doing supposedly misleading and biased work. It uses terms like “left wing lunacy” to describe some of its complaints.

The site’s first iteration is particularly focused on media reporting about Trump’s call for six Democratic members of Congress to be arrested, tried, and punished for their supposedly “seditious” video reminding military and intelligence personnel that they are not obliged to follow illegal orders. Trump even boosted a social media post that shouted: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD” (He later told Fox News he wasn’t “threatening death, but I think they’re in serious trouble”).

All this for a video in which the members of Congress sought to remind people that military members make an oath to the constitution, not to the president.

“Our laws are clear. You can refuse illegal orders,” Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, a former astronaut and a US navy veteran, says on the video. Trump has been especially furious about Kelly, who seems like just the wrong person to go after, giving his background of service and high credibility.

The White House site crows that those journalists and outlets who reported on all this are now “exposed”.

There really is something being exposed here, but it’s not the reporting.

It’s Trump’s own increasing desperation and his decreasing ability to countenance anything other than flattery and sycophancy. That’s not what the mainstream press is – or should be – in the business of providing.

But as Jonathan Lemire reported this week in the Atlantic, this president has become more and more isolated lately. His social media appears mostly restricted to his own (poorly named) Truth Social site; his travel is generally not to meet with (or even see) ordinary Americans; instead he tends to hang out with the billionaires who want something from his administration and are willing to cozy up shamelessly to get it.

“President Trump has never before been in such an echo chamber,” according to Lemire. “His domestic travel has basically stopped. He sees rich donors and MAGA media, not actual voters.”

Given that bubble, harsh reality via the media is a rude intrusion, and the new White House site is an evident effort to dispel the discomfort by disparaging it.

Who, I wonder, does Trump think he’s reaching with this effort?

The Maga faithful, of course, don’t need to be persuaded. They already are fully on board with anything their dear leader does. And most other Americans – even some of the millions who voted for him – already have his number.

Trump’s overall approval rating of 38% is the lowest since his return to the presidency, according to a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll. It has fallen dramatically since the start of that second term and is down two percentage points just since the beginning of November. Even his iron grip on the Republican party has weakened. All of that is a deep worry with the approach of the midterm elections – less than a year away.

Who can he blame?

Why, the press, of course. And that’s precisely what this new site is all about.

Will it work? Granted, trust in the mainstream press is low, so reporters and news organizations are a convenient target of criticism. And granted, media bias exists, though the most blatant is on the far right, the busy pro-Trump propagandists.

But I agree with Seth Stern, director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, who told the Washington Post that most people – whatever their politics – aren’t going to buy what this new “bias tracker” is selling.

“People understand the obvious conflict inherent in a presidential administration appointing itself the arbiter of media bias,” Stern said.

That’s especially true for media criticism from those doing the bidding of Trump, who has made his antipathy toward the press so central to his persona.

Calling out inaccurate and biased reporting is a fair pursuit. Journalists are far from flawless; they make mistakes, and the best of them correct those quickly and fully.

But that’s not what this new site is about. And trashing the media is not going to help Trump get out of the trouble – or the bubble – that he’s in.

• Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture