The Media’s Role in Making Trump a Viable Acceptable Candidate: the Mere Exposure Effect, Availability Heuristic, and Confirmation Bias

1. Familiarity Breeds Acceptance: How Mere Exposure Affects Media Reporting on Trump
2. Riding the Narrative Wave: The Availability Heuristic’s Grip on Reporting
3. The Selective Vision: How Confirmation Bias Blinds Reporting
4. Confronting Our Cognitive Biases: A Collective Responsibility
5. Image Attribution

With the election a mere 39 days away as of this writing (September 27), our anxiety is palpable. We all seek reassurance, turning to pollsters, pundits, and prognosticators for insights into a race that many predict will be as close as in 2016 and 2020. Current polling reveals only a few percentage points separating Harris and Trump in the battleground states, leading to predictions of a nail-biter.

For liberals and progressives who’ve navigated the turbulent political landscape of the past decade, it’s bewildering that anyone views the Felonious Authoritarian Rapist Traitor (Old FART) as a viable candidate—especially given his unprecedented dishonesty and the fact that he led an insurrection against the peaceful transfer of power after losing an election.

Yet, the Republican Party and mainstream media continue to treat Trump as an acceptable candidate. Why is that? For Republicans, it’s about establishing a single-party, pseudo-democratic regime akin to Russia’s oligarchy. But what drives the media’s complicity? Is it merely profit, or is there something more insidious at play?

Can it really be that simple? Can the profit-seeking motive fully explain why the media ignores his incessant lies? Or could it be something more human at work? Perhaps reporters and editors are falling prey to the same biases and heuristics that affect most of us.

We’ll focus on three common cognitive tendencies and mental shortcuts to explain to explain the ways that the media may be less than wittingly supporting Trump.

Familiarity Breeds Acceptance: How Mere Exposure Affects Media Reporting on Trump

According to the APA Dictionary of Psychology, the mere exposure effect is “the finding that individuals show an increased preference (or liking) for a stimulus as a consequence of repeated exposure to that stimulus.” In simpler terms, when you hear or read something repeatedly, you’re more likely to accept it as true over time. This principle is why Hitler’s Propaganda Playbook advises would-be authoritarians to double and triple down on their lies even in the face of criticism.

However, there are caveats. The mere exposure effect is most potent when the audience doesn’t already harbor negative feelings about the subject. This explains why many liberals are less swayed by Trump’s Big Lie. Yet, it also reveals why reporters, in their misguided quest for neutrality, can fall victim to Trump’s fabrications—like his claim of presiding over the best economy in history.

The media often reports Trump’s assertions without rigorous fact-checking. His surrogates go on pundit shows, reciting these lies with little to no challenge. Each time a reporter hears the claim that the Old FART oversaw the best economy in history, another layer of veneer is added to the thin coating of truth that mere exposure creates. The more often the claim goes unchallenged, the harder it becomes to dispute it in the future.

This growing “varnish of truthiness” accumulates like a stubborn stain in an unwashed toilet. Many reporters and editors become so accustomed to this greasy residue that they no longer see the need to scrub it out.

Since merely being exposed to a lie makes it easier to accept the lie as the truth, the lie actually becomes familiar and is more easily recalled. This phenomenon paves the way for the next cognitive trap: the availability heuristic.

Riding the Narrative Wave: The Availability Heuristic’s Grip on Reporting

The availability heuristic shapes our judgments based on how easily we can recall similar information. Repetition strengthens memories, making it easier for us to accept claims as true—especially after hearing the same lie for the millionth time.

We can understand why the average person falls for the one-two punch of merely being exposed to the incessant lie that Trump presided over a booming economy and then using that as the frame to shape their judgment of his ability to manage our future economy. They are busy, distracted with their work, families, and lives.

But what about reporters? Isn’t it their JOB to analyze what politicians say and report on its veracity? Shouldn’t we expect them to challenge blatant lies, much like a teacher does with a lying student or a parent with a child?

Reporters are busy, too. They are working to deadlines. They need “scoops”—stories that are both engaging and unique. Given the pressures, of a crowded competitive media market to bring in the clicks, likes, and shares, it’s often easier to accept the narrative presented by the availability heuristic than to critically assess and challenge it. Constantly disputing Trump’s lies risks alienating the 20% of the U.S. population (not the electorate) that supports him.

Another disincentive for reporting Trump lies is the risk of getting it wrong. Not only does it take time and effort to identify the lie, but there is some risk to falling victim to some clever rhetoric that could be spun into a “gotcha” moment, nor do they want to be labeled biased for merely doing their job. And let’s be honest, reporting on Trump’s economy as a lie becomes repetitive—like the world’s most boring rerun—which may reinforce the lie’s validity (thanks to the mere exposure effect) but does little to captivate an audience in a competitive media landscape.

A busy reporter under the stress of deadlines and needing to attract an audience will just accept the frame that the availability heuristic delivers to them rather than going through the effort and the extra step of detecting the lie, debunking it, and finding a clever way of writing that story AGAIN so that it will be suitable clickbait.

Under the stress of deadlines and the need to engage readers, busy reporters often accept the frame that the availability heuristic provides. It’s simply less cognitive effort than the arduous task of detecting, debunking, and creatively writing the same story AGAIN in the hope of meeting their quota of clicks, likes, and shares.

As reporters navigate the pressures of their profession, the availability heuristic not only simplifies their decision-making but also solicits another pervasive cognitive bias, confirmation bias. Once the narrative is set, it’s all too easy for journalists to gravitate toward information that reinforces these preconceived notions. This dual effect creates a feedback loop, where familiar lies are not only accepted but actively defended, making it increasingly challenging to confront the truth.

The Selective Vision: How Confirmation Bias Blinds Reporting

Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek out or interpret information that supports our existing beliefs. It’s a powerful bias that shapes our understanding of the world, often operating outside our conscious awareness, making it difficult to correct. This bias affects reporters and editors just as much as the rest of us.

Once a lie takes on the shiny facade of truthiness (thanks to the mere exposure effect), it becomes the first thing we recall on that topic (due to the influence of the availability heuristic). The fact that it’s a lie often gets conveniently omitted from memory, allowing it to act as a filter in our search for and analysis of information.

For reporters and editors, this means that information that challenges the Trump’s lie that he had the BEST economy in history begins to feel suspect. It sets their journalistic spidey senses to tingling, leading them to reject contradicting information rather than evaluate it. It’s simply easier and less risky to exclude anything that disrupts the widely accepted narrative.

A prime example of this is how any negative economic indicators from Trump’s term are often blamed on the #COVID19 pandemic. While the pandemic undeniably worsened conditions, it’s crucial to recognize that the Old FART’s handling of the crisis exacerbated the situation. His refusal to take necessary actions delayed recovery, leaving it to Biden to implement measures that finally brought the pandemic under control and get the economic recovery started.

Consequently, reporting on Trump’s economy is frequently divided between pre- and post-#COVID19, allowing him to evade accountability for the economic damage he contributed to. The narrative conveniently shifts, giving Trump a pass for the pandemic’s ravages on the country.

Confronting Our Cognitive Biases: A Collective Responsibility

While we scratch our collective asses and wonder not only why our fingers stink so much of Trump, but also how the media can be so derelict in meeting their professional duty of being arbiters of the truth, separating fact, opinion, and fiction. Remembering that real live human beings are behind every news story we read and that those exact same people are as susceptible as we are to the cognitive biases and heuristics that distort our own perceptions of the wold helps us be better consumers of media.

By acknowledging these biases—the mere exposure effect, the availability heuristic, and confirmation bias—we can become more discerning consumers of media, demanding better from our news sources and hold them accountable for the narratives they propagate.

At the same time, it is crucial for those working in media to recognize and resist these all-too-human tendencies. Journalists and editors must strive to uphold the integrity of their profession, standing firm against the pressures of a hostile media environment. Only by confronting these and other cognitive biases can they truly fulfill their role as arbiters of truth and separate fact, opinion, and fiction.

In the end, it’s up to all of us—both consumers and creators of news—to advocate for a more honest and accurate discourse. Together, we can push back against the tide of misinformation and work toward a media landscape that prioritizes truth over convenience.

Image Attribution

This image was found on Better Humans using a DuckDuckGo Creative Commons License search