Tweets and Trump: NYT reporter Maggie Haberman reflects on perils of social media, at virtual Drew Forum

Maggie Haberman
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By Olivia Yepez

For some, Twitter is a place to share pithy posts and life updates.

For Maggie Haberman, White House correspondent for the New York Times and political analyst for CNN, tweets became a reporting tool — and made her a target of former President Donald Trump.

“Twitter became an established news source. And then it became…not that,”  Haberman told Drew University students this week via Zoom, as part of the Madison school’s Drew Forum series.

Presently on leave from the Times while writing a book about Trump, Haberman devoted much of Wednesday’s talk to the power and pressures of social media.

It’s not real life,” Haberman said, urging the audience to slow down.

Twitter has become a “toxic and angry place,” with an algorithm “designed to create controversy.”  It’s part of a social media landscape where threats against political opponents and journalists alike have been mainstreamed, she said. 

It’s exhausting, she said, and has left her feeling “brain-fried.”

Haberman recounted a morning in 2012 when she awoke to a text from her boss advising her not to check her Twitter account. When she opened the app, she discovered a multi-post thread by Trump, criticizing a recent article she had written about him. It was her daughter’s ninth birthday.

“He reacts to things he doesn’t like,” Haberman said matter-of-factly. “And I often write things he doesn’t like.”

Yet, like many in the media, she has benefited from a “Trump bump.”

Her Twitter following has grown to 1.7 million, in large part because of Donald Trump. Her numbers soared, she said, after the Times tapped her to live-tweet an interview with the President-elect in 2016.

Years of covering Trump convinced her he would be a serious presidential contender; that assessment grew stronger as she watched his support grow among evangelical Christians in 2015.

The online campaign, and Trump’s years in the White House, tested Haberman’s views about objectivity and the role of journalists.

“On Twitter, everyone wants reporters to have opinions and we haven’t done that,” she said.

Weighing in on the Times’ initial hesitancy to use the term “lie” in relation to statements by Trump, Haberman said, I don’t think there is a significant difference between saying something isn’t true or it is a lie.”

Trained to remove personal biases and search for truth, Haberman emphasized that truth is not necessarily glowing. “We need to define what we mean by ‘objective,’”  she said.

 Once she finishes her book project, Haberman said, she will be done covering Trump.

 His re-election in 2024 would not be easy. But it is possible, she said.

I mean, yeah, I do think he could win,” Haberman said, adding, paradoxically, that she thinks Trump’s public image is benefiting from his suspension by Twitter.

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