I keep seeing how the rulebook has been thrown out the door by Donald. So therefore Hillary is held to a high standard but only “new rules” apply to Donald.
Why should this be? Shouldn’t the interviewers just throw up disproving documentation and say answer it or get lost.
Couldn’t they just get curt about it in the national interest? The surrogates you can dispense with. You just say “No more lying or disingenuous shit or you’re banned” Then the Trump campaign can send another surrogate if one gets banned. Each banning will make some news about the lying and they’ll have to go deeper into the bench, and see if any argument is possible in a civil environment.
At what point will the media feel the need to do this? Obviously the current approach is a disaster.
You seem to be operating under the assumption that the media is in the business of promoting the “national interest.” It’s not. With the exception of public radio and television, the media is in the business of making money, primarily via advertising. Period.
The way that media sells advertising is by attracting consumers to their product (i.e. attracting readers and viewers). One way to do this is by acquiring a reputation for good journalism. Another way is by sensationalism. And guess which candidate has proved to be a master of manipulating the media by serving up a regular dose of his latest outrageous statements? Why else would the media provide $2 billion of free media coverage to him (as of 6 months ago).
It may be a disaster for the public discourse and the national interest, but the outrageous behavior of Trump is the best thing for the media to come along in some time.
But the media is not just under economic pressure to get customers. It has other expectations and pressures too. They are a public service of a kind and it’s not going to work just to let Donald lie to them indefinitely. How would that be a good business model even for a terrible news outlet, over the long term? Who would watch?
Many journos are getting pilloried for the softball incompetent vetting of Donald.
There may not be a time this month where they need to change. But at some point, unless we become a dictatorship, it will.
The media is for making money and pushing narratives acceptable to their owners. It doesn’t make any sense for the media to scorch the Earth since they’d just get banned by the campaign while everyone else scoops up the the awful lying surrogates (who everyone loves watching).
The media are for-profit businesses. Like a lot of for-profit businesses, they probably assume on some level that a guy like Donald isn’t going to hurt their bottom line. They can’t imagine how he could – until it actually happens. Eventually, it will. But eventually could be a long time from now.
Well they are starting to call out the lie word, and that represents an adaptation to the market so to speak, for information and not money. They aren’t only profit centers, the same as we are all not money machines, as the audience. Their brand is information. It can be damaged. I don’t think it’s as simple as you all do. People can become jaded and cynical easily now. The money pot may empty out in strange ways. Look at the cynicism and nihilism of Trump voters.
This isn’t exactly right. The product is readers and viewers and the customers are advertisers. All other things being equal, they want to attract readers and viewers to sell to their customers.
I don’t believe there is anything contradictory in our two statements.
I didn’t say that readers and viewers are the customers; I said that they are consumers of the product that is produced by the media. They (along with their eyeballs and attention) are also the end product that advertisers pay the media companies for.