In the age of Facebook, the pejorative term “clickbait” gets thrown around a lot—more so with political journalism.
MSNBC’s Rachael Maddow may have won the unofficial 2017 prize for “worst clickbait of the year.” And it’s only March.
It was supposed to be the biggest scoop. Democrats and never-Trumpers have pilloried Trump for not releasing his tax returns. You'll see the demand in Facebook posts and comments below reports. Since last year, another narrative has been waved: “Trump hasn’t paid any taxes in the last 18 years.” Maddow, a frequent Trump critic single-handedly destroyed it in a few tweets and one TV episode.
On Tuesday, Maddow built up the story with a tweet to her 6 million followers: “BREAKING: We’ve got Trump tax returns. Tonight, 9pm ET. MSNBC. (Seriously).”
BREAKING: We’ve got Trump tax returns. Tonight, 9pm ET. MSNBC.
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) March 14, 2017
(Seriously).
Maddow claimed she received two pages of documents she received from a Washington, D.C.-area reporter. The details she eventually reported came from a 1040 form in 2005, showing Trump paid more than $38 million on around $150 million in income, meaning he paid about 25 percent in taxes for that year. When she eventually revealed the tax form, she struggled to make the two pages seem interesting, which came after about 15 minutes of preamble.
The response on Twitter was overwhelmingly negative, with many saying Maddow pushes “fake news” while engaging in shady, clickbait tactics. On the latter point, they’re not wrong.
Even CNN, the most frequent target of Trump’s ire, couldn’t help itself: “Rachel Maddow’s epic buildup to ... 2 pages from Trump’s 2005 tax returns.”
However, it’s worse than that. There’s a phenomenon that has emerged in reporting on Trump’s campaign-turned-presidency—distraction.
For example, when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was being grilled by the Senate for his position late last year, Trump met, and took photos with, rapper Kanye West. For a few days, it was all media outlets could talk about. There was little focus on Tillerson.
