Chuck Darwin<p>There will come a time, maybe even in the next few days, <br>when at least some of our top newsroom leaders will acknowledge the growing mountain of evidence before them <br>and reach the obvious conclusion that Donald Trump’s actions have precipitated a full-fledged constitutional crisis.<br>They will recognize that through his unconstitutional executive orders, <br>his rampant law-breaking, <br>and (new!) his defiance of court orders, <br>he is acting as if he alone is the government. <br>And they will see how the other branches are either unwilling or unable to restrain him.<br>Assuming they are not immediately fired by their corporate bosses for insubordination, <br>they will then call a <a href="https://c.im/tags/staff" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>staff</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/meeting" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>meeting</span></a> or send out a <a href="https://c.im/tags/memo" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>memo</span></a>, to share their conclusion.<br>But what then? <br>What will those newsrooms start to do differently❓<br>I hope our top journalists have thought this through already, but I fear they have not.<br>As it happens, I have some ideas.<br>The first essential step is to fully and intentionally go into crisis mode. <br>💥That means constant, round-the-clock, top-of-the-homepage coverage until the crisis is resolved.<br><a href="https://c.im/tags/Oliver" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Oliver</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Darcy" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Darcy</span></a>, in his media newsletter <a href="https://c.im/tags/Status" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Status</span></a>, did a marvelous job last week of describing what the media’s response to Trump’s actions should be. <br>“Think about how it covers natural disasters and terror attacks,” he wrote. <br>✅“It’s time to break out those six-column front page headlines and interrupt regular programming with special broadcast news reports.”<br>Crisis coverage requires clarity and focus: <br>💥During a crisis, you don’t argue about whether there is a crisis or not. You focus on getting through it.<br>Crisis coverage also requires a dramatic change in language. <br>✅No more euphemisms and passive voice. It’s time for strong words and active verbs.<br>It requires authoritative reporting. <br>✅No splitting the difference between two sources when one of them is misinformed or deliberately misleading. Accurate information is essential in a crisis.<br>It requires big-picture thinking: <br>✅What are the consequences of this crisis? Who will it affect and how?<br>It requires profiles of the victims.<br>It calls for regular assessments of the response. <br>Who’s helping? Who’s hurting? Who’s proposing solutions? <br>Whose ideas are just making it worse?<br>✅It requires digging into the motives of the people who are making it worse.<br>And this is minor, but it necessitates calling things by their name: <br>Bold rubrics like “Democracy in Crisis” or “America Under Siege” <br>— not “Trump Administration.”<br>Identifying something as a crisis is the opposite of accepting it as the new normal <br>— and that’s entirely the point. <br>🔥This can’t become the new normal. Our democracy won’t survive<br><a href="https://presswatchers.org/2025/02/step-one-acknowledge-the-constitutional-crisis-whats-step-two/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">presswatchers.org/2025/02/step</span><span class="invisible">-one-acknowledge-the-constitutional-crisis-whats-step-two/</span></a></p>