Donald Trump, Impeachment Proceedings and the Media

This paper aims to examine the news coverage of President Donald Trump’s two impeachment proceedings. An interesting political figure even before his two impeachment proceedings as someone who rose to the ranks of president without any prior political experience, Donald Trump became even more interesting as the first US president to face impeachment twice. The tensions between Donald Trump as a political figure, the circumstances of modern media with their opposing political views, and the problems with understanding impeachment as a political process, all come to create a situation where news reporting is hardly impartial, and where what one news article is claiming carries hardly any resemblance to what another news article might say on the same matter. As an American Studies research, this paper takes advantage of a variety of methodologies to look into this matter. The paper looks at the media representation of Donald Trump, as well as political analyses of some salient aspects of his political persona in the context of impeachment proceedings against him. Furthermore, the paper delves into the history, as well as the political and legal theory behind impeachment and locates what there is of an academic consensus on the matter of impeachment. Consensus on impeachment outside of academic writing, however, is a lot more difficult to encounter, as is made evident by the newspaper articles and headlines analyzed using primarily a pragmatic meaning analysis model. The media analysis confirms that newspaper reporting on impeachment matters makes use of a lack of clarity about impeachment in public discourse, as well as differing views on Donald Trump. Using these, among other tools at their disposal, news sources are able to portray a version of events of their choosing, one that carries little if any resemblance to what news sources of the opposing political leaning portray. If this is merely the beginning of a trend, or if this atmosphere of ‘alternative facts’ is here to stay, is yet to be seen