New Media and the Messy Nature of Reporting on the Alt-Right

The question of how to cover the alt-right and its leaders has long been a complicated one. It's grown even more so given that President Donald Trump appointed leaders of that movement—including White House adviser Steve Bannon, who previously ran the alt-right media company Breitbart—to his staff. At its core, the mainstream press is grappling with this conundrum: Ignore these groups and risk allowing a potential public threat to go unreported; shine too bright a light on them, and risk amplifying their message—or worse, attracting new acolytes to the cause.

There’s no right approach to covering this growing movement, but one thing is certain: The press has erred on the side of overexposure. It’s positioned the alt-right in the center of President Trump's story, in part because of the shock value of the movement’s actions. This fringe group has taken the country’s implicit history of racism and made it explicit, which is certainly newsworthy. But that's brought unpleasant side effects, namely, giving the leaders of these hate groups coverage disproportionate to their influence. After all, it took a whole lot of mainstream Republicans to help usher President Trump into office. He received the greatest number of primary votes in the history of the Republican party. He also won the general election with 88 percent of Republican party votes, according to exit polls. The right got President Trump elected; the alt-right was merely a subset. But as Trump's comments indicate, he clearly believes it is a crucial subset.