Between Trump and a Hard Place: Civil Gatekeeping and Moral Equivalence in Press Endorsements of 2016 Presidential Candidates

Abstract

Building upon interdisciplinary scholarship, I posit a normative role of journalistic institutions as “civil gatekeepers” articulating a society’s core values and keeping figures and ideas that threaten those values from the centers of power. Through mixed-method analyses of 2016 press endorsements of U.S. presidential candidates, I investigate how American newspapers’ editorial boards fulfilled this civil gatekeeping role to evaluate the threats these candidates posed to democratic values and institutions. While editorial boards attempted to convey the unprecedented threat they believed Donald Trump posed to democracy, endorsements elicited nuanced patterns of moral equivalence as they simultaneously excoriated Trump’s competence while questioning Hillary Clinton’s integrity. This research contributes to a broader understanding of the civic and moral roles of journalistic institutions, and their enactment of cultural codes that give shape to, and help to protect, a society’s normative values. I argue journalistic institutions are capable of serving as a powerful force for the preservation and communication of these values, possessing the unique ability to close the “gates” of the civil sphere to the ideas and figures representing the greatest threats to them.